I build images the way a mosaic is built: from many small parts that resolve into a single whole when viewed from a distance.
Every tile in this image is one of my Geo-Surrealistic Landscapes. Tap or click any tile to see which one it is, and where else it appears.
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The Library
Geo-Surrealistic Landscapes explore the inner architecture of the mind. These dreamlike worlds are portals into unseen layers of emotion, memory, and transformation.
Between 2021 and 2026 I made thousands of digital generative works. Each began as part of one series or another. The Library is the 1,024 I kept: a curated data set, sorted and catalogued.
Each image stands as a work of its own, and each is also a tile: the source material for every mosaic I make. Prints of most images can be requested from their pages; a few exhibited works are 1/1 originals only. More on the process
How the Library is catalogued
Every image has a permanent ID, from VS-0001 to VS-1024, that never changes. Its full name is that ID followed by its ten-character code, based on how it’s catalogued.
Every image is catalogued by ten characteristics, each measured from the image itself. Together they cover what the eye reads first: color (hue, spectrum, saturation), light (tone, contrast), texture (density, scale, line), and structure (flow, symmetry).
None of them is a judgment of quality. The ten-character code describes; it does not rank. Ten was chosen on purpose: two to the power of ten is 1,024, the size of the Library and a number at the root of binary computing.
Mosaics
Images rebuilt tile by tile from the Library of 1,024 Geo-Surrealistic Landscapes. This is the lead body of work, and more collections are in progress.
From a Single Library Image
Each of these works grows out of one image in the Library: set in motion, extended by AI, cut into strips, or divided into blocks. Every page names its source.
In the Library
Landscapes from the Library, shown and offered as works in their own right.
What Can I See Now?
I build images the way a mosaic is built: from many small parts that resolve into a single whole when viewed from a distance. The work invites two ways of seeing. Up close, we encounter individual fragments, each with its own color, identity, and character. From farther away, those fragments come together to reveal an entirely different image. Neither perspective tells the whole story. Meaning emerges in the movement between them.
This relationship between the individual and the collective, the fragment and the whole, has become central to how I see the world. As a minority, I have often been conscious of perspective: how I see others, how others see me, and how the same reality can look entirely different depending on where one stands. Looking closely and stepping back have become ways of understanding my surroundings, questioning assumptions, and finding connections that might otherwise remain hidden. For me, changing perspective is not simply an artistic exercise. It is a way of making sense of experience.
I founded Videre Studio, inspired by the Latin word videre, meaning “to see.” The studio encourages collectors to See, to Describe, to Think, and ultimately to Connect with art. I believe that any meaningful and lasting experience with art begins with truly seeing it. But seeing is not passive. It requires attention, interpretation, curiosity, and a willingness to reconsider what we think we already know.
The pieces in my mosaics come from a Library I curated from the thousands of Geo-Surrealistic Landscapes I made at different times, for different reasons. To build a mosaic, an algorithm I vibe coded examines each small region of a target image and searches the Library for the landscape whose color comes closest.
Something unexpected happened. The images were created years apart and were never intended to exist alongside one another. Yet the algorithm identified color relationships and connections across my work that I had not previously recognized. It allowed me to see my own creative history differently. The technology did more than help me make an image. It revealed possibilities within my work that I could not have anticipated.
I recognize that I am changing through this process, too. My role is evolving from creating individual images toward imagining systems, establishing relationships, and directing new forms of creative exploration. I am learning to work with outcomes I cannot entirely predict, and to recognize value in discoveries that emerge through collaboration.
The question my mosaics keep asking is the one I now ask of myself: What can I see now that I couldn’t see before, and what am I still not seeing?
Tap any tile to see which landscape it is.
Biography
David Mew is a generative artist and the founder of Videre Studio, based in Los Angeles. His practice sits at the intersection of generative systems, data cataloguing, and consciousness, and is anchored by a self-curated Library of 1,024 Geo-Surrealistic Landscapes that he treats as both finished works and raw material. The number is deliberate, a nod to the binary architecture of the machines that help make them. Each landscape in the Library is a dreamlike world, inspired by years of meditation and yoga and defined by saturated color palettes, geometric layers, and intricate detail.
Mew builds his own tools, writing custom software with AI collaborators to compose, tile, and animate his images. Across several series he uses the Library as a palette of tiles, matching each one by perceptual color to assemble larger images. The system has built Who Made This?, rendering twelve architects of artificial intelligence as animated mosaic portraits; Whose Future?, reconstructing Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire tile by tile; and Golden Coast, a connection to his hand-painted acrylic compositions.
Mew’s work has been presented in gallery and public art contexts, including The Other Art Fair, MoCA L.I.ghts, and The Wrong Biennale. He was an FA2 Fellow and is a current member of the AI Artists Alliance’s Artist Accelerator Program. He received Arts & Culture Grants from The Brill Family Foundation for his work in artificial intelligence and a New Futures Award from The Other Art Fair. He is an indexed artist in the Techspressionism movement.
Creative process
- IdeationEach series begins with a question or a feeling. The work reflects lived experience and personal growth, through the lens of wellness, identity, and place.
- AlgorithmI define a system of rules for composition, color, and texture, run a first draft, then iterate: try, look, adjust, until the key idea appears.
- CurationEvery system offers a vast range of outcomes. I select the outputs that match the emotional tone of the series.
- FormatThe process is digital, but the work is meant for physical space: prints face-mounted under acrylic, dye-sublimated metal panels, lightboxes, and projection.
Fellowships, grants and awards
- 2026–ongoing
- Artist Accelerator Program, AI Artists Alliance
- 2025–26
- FA2 Fellowship, Museum of the Moving Image × Tezos, New York, NY
- 2025–26
- Arts & Culture Grants, The Brill Family Foundation, Santa Barbara, CA→ Co-Creators
- 2022
- New Futures Award (Class of 2022), The Other Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA→ Familiar Feeling, New World
Exhibitions
- 2026
- Lights on Museum of Contemporary Art Long Island, MoCA L.I.ghts 2026 Projection Festival, Patchogue Village, NYShown: Into the Fold
- 2026
- Art on the Marquee®, site-specific public art installation, Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, Patchogue Village, NY→ Color Flow
- 2026
- Metatopia: Delirium Ex Machina, The Wrong Biennale, Aisthesis Lab, São Paulo, Brazil→ Co-Creators
- 2025
- Symbiosis or Schism? The AI-Human Odyssey, Community Arts Workshop (CAW), Santa Barbara, CA→ Co-Creators
- 2025
- The Wrong Biennale 2025/26, with 60Seconds, CBS Digital Space, Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark→ Drift Into Color
- 2025
- Lights on Museum of Contemporary Art Long Island, MoCA L.I.ghts VI | 2025 Projection Festival, Patchogue Village, NY→ Move with Joy
- 2025
- Art on the Marquee®, site-specific public art installation, Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, Patchogue Village, NY→ Color Slide and Color Dance
- 2024
- Lights on Museum of Contemporary Art Long Island, MoCA L.I.ghts V | 2024 Projection Festival, Patchogue Village, NY→ Move with Joy
- 2022
- The Other Art Fair Los Angeles, The Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, CA→ Familiar Feeling, New World
- 2022
- Textures, Shapes, Patterns or Forms, Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA→ Translation of a Natural Tranquilizer’s Reach
- 2022
- Emergence, The Holy Art Gallery, London, United Kingdom→ Circular Themes of Joy
- 2022
- Envisionary Art Lounge, Boom Festival, Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal→ Between Horror and Hope
- 2021
- Textures, Shapes, Patterns or Forms, Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
Education
University of California, Berkeley
B.A. Economics · B.S. Business Administration
College of Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.
Coursework in computer science, econometrics, statistics, and data science.
Contact
For exhibitions, commissions and press:
david@viderestudio.com Copied
Los Angeles, California.
Commissions
A commission starts with your subject and your space. I rebuild the subject from the Library, tile by tile. Art consultants, designers, and private clients are all welcome.
What you can commission
A landmark, a view from the property, a portrait, a signature plant. Up close it is hundreds of individual landscapes. From across the room it is your image. See Golden Coast.
Any image in the Library, or a set chosen to work together, produced large: photographic prints face-mounted under acrylic, dye-sublimated metal panels, or lightboxes. Browse the Library.
A looped generative video composed for one facade, wall, or screen.
How it works
- BriefYou send the space, size, timeline, and budget, using the form below.
- Subject and paletteWe agree on the subject and choose a palette from the Library to suit the room.
- ProofYou receive a digital proof at full composition, with a close-up at true size, to approve or adjust.
- Production and installThe approved piece is printed, finished, and delivered, with a record of the permanent ID of every Library image it contains.
Send a brief
Prints
Prints are made to order and sold by inquiry: the Progress Pride set, any image in the Library, or any of the mosaics. Each can be printed on paper, canvas, aluminum, or acrylic.
Progress Pride
Inspired by the evolving colors of the Progress Pride flag, this collection symbolizes the dynamic nature of personal identity and the transformative power of social change. Through my Geo-Surrealistic lens, viewers are invited to contemplate their own journey of self-discovery, fostering unity in diversity and celebrating the essence of inclusivity.
Eleven landscapes, one for each color of the Progress Pride flag. Hung together, they form the flag. The collection is sold only as a complete set of eleven.
100% of profits from every Progress Pride print go to the Human Rights Campaign.
Sizes and price on request.
Inquire
Elsewhere
Original works are listed on Saatchi Art.