About arrogantkei
Kei is a surreal 3D artist whose work explores transformation and longing through celestial figures moving through emotional, dreamlike voids.
An interview with arrogantkei led by Carlo Borloni
Your new series tells the story of a forbidden love between two beings from opposite realms, unfolding across six moments. How did this narrative come to life, and what led you to express it through body and silence rather than words or explicit settings?
This story came to life through a feeling more than an idea. It began with a quiet weight I could not name, a kind of ache that stayed with me long after I tried to ignore it. The more I sat with it, the more it revealed itself not through language or plot but through presence. There was this pull between two forces that were never meant to meet. That space between them became the story.
I did not want to use dialogue or direct storytelling because some emotions exist beyond language. The kind of love I am depicting is delicate, sacred, and dangerous. It cannot be contained in a sentence. I found that body and stillness carried more truth. A hand reaching but stopping just short says more to me than any words ever could.
Silence became the container for everything I wanted to express, the longing, the restraint, the weight of knowing something beautiful might break if it ever fully formed. These six moments are not scenes as much as they are pauses. Each one is a breath held between decisions. That is where the story lives.
In your work, the body becomes an emotional language. What is your process for constructing these gestures? Do you begin with an emotion, a mental image, or do you let the body speak for itself?
My process often begins with an emotion. Sometimes I do not even know what it is. It just feels like something unresolved. It might come from a dream, a memory, or a conversation that left me unsettled. I usually sit with that feeling until it starts to form a posture in my mind.
Other times, it is the body that leads. I might pose a figure in a way that feels vulnerable or tense and let that become the starting point. A slight bend of the back or the tilt of a head can carry so much meaning. I adjust the pose until it feels honest, like something I have seen before in real life or in a memory I forgot I had.
I am not trying to mimic real life exactly. I am trying to translate emotion into shape. The body holds tension, grief, intimacy, and hesitation all at once. I trust that when the pose is right, the story will emerge through the silence of it.
The collection seems to move between the sacred and the carnal, between spirituality and loss. How does the spiritual dimension influence your creative process?
The spiritual aspect of my work is not something I plan for, but it always finds its way in. It shows up in the atmosphere, in the way light touches a figure, in the quiet tension that holds everything in place. For me, spirituality is about presence. It is about stillness and the parts of ourselves we only hear when everything else is quiet.
I think of my creative process almost like a ritual. There is an emotional preparation that happens before I open the software or begin building a scene. I have to feel connected to what I am trying to say, even if I do not know the words yet. That connection is what gives the work its weight.
The figures in this series are suspended in spaces that feel both real and imagined. They are not in heaven or on earth. They are somewhere in between, and that space feels spiritual to me. It is the space where questions live. The ones we do not have answers to. The ones we are still becoming.
You chose to express the conflict and intimacy between your characters in a non-literal way. What do you gain, as an artist and storyteller, from preserving ambiguity and symbolism?
Ambiguity gives the viewer space to feel. That is what I care about most. If I explain everything too clearly, the mystery disappears. The tension dissolves. But when I leave space for interpretation, the viewer steps into the work and brings themselves into it. That creates a deeper connection.
Symbolism lets me speak in layers. A hand may not just be a hand. It might be forgiveness. It might be regret. A glowing thread between two bodies could be love or memory or something they cannot name. The more open the image is, the more personal it becomes.
As an artist, I gain freedom. I do not feel limited by having to make sense. I can trust that the emotional logic is enough. If a piece makes someone feel something before they understand it, then I know it is working.
Many of your figures blend the human with the ethereal through metallic textures, celestial light, and otherworldly atmospheres. What do these abstract beings represent to you? Are they inner projections, archetypes, or something else entirely?
They are all of those things. Sometimes they are who I used to be. Sometimes they are who I am afraid of becoming. Other times they are just emotion made visible. The metallic textures make them feel less human but more reflective. They do not just exist in their own world. They mirror ours.
I think of them as vessels. They are not meant to be literal people. They are states of being. One might represent longing. Another might represent surrender. I do not always know what they mean when I create them, but I feel their presence. They are like fragments of something sacred and broken at once.
The otherworldly setting is not just for visual impact. It helps me remove the work from our everyday world so that the emotions inside it can be felt more clearly. The less familiar the environment, the more room the viewer has to project their own story into it.
This series holds a delicate balance between love and consequence, desire and surrender. How personal is this duality for you?
It is very personal. Those tensions have shaped the way I love and the way I create. I know what it feels like to want something deeply and to know that it might cost you something important. I have experienced connection that felt like salvation and loss that felt like a kind of death.
This duality is not just a theme. It is a lived experience. I have learned that love is not always safe, and desire is not always simple. Sometimes choosing yourself means letting someone go. Sometimes surrender is the only way to be free.
Creating this series helped me process some of that. It gave form to things I had only ever felt. By showing it through these beings, I could look at it from a distance and understand it more clearly. It is still emotional, but there is clarity in the abstraction.
Your style blends surrealism with 3D technology, spirituality with visual innovation. What are your main influences, both within and beyond the digital art world?
My influences come from many different places. In the digital art world, I am drawn to artists who use light and atmosphere to create emotion. I admire people who make the unreal feel intimate, who can say something spiritual without being obvious.
Outside of digital art, I am heavily influenced by music. Soundscapes, ambient tracks, anything that creates a mood without lyrics. That kind of emotional suggestion inspires how I approach lighting and movement in my own work.
I also find inspiration in film, especially quiet scenes where nothing happens on the surface but everything is happening underneath. And then there is life itself. The way people move when they are in love. The way grief changes your posture. The tension of holding back a feeling. These moments influence my work more than anything else.
You’ve shown your work in vastly different places, from Times Square to Tokyo. How does the reception of your work change between physical and digital spaces? And what does connection with the audience mean to you?
In digital spaces, the reach is wider but sometimes faster. People scroll quickly. They may connect, but the moment is brief. In physical spaces, people linger. They stand in front of the piece and let it wash over them. The silence of the room becomes part of the experience.
The most meaningful moments are when someone tells me they felt seen. That they could not explain why a piece moved them but it did. That is connection to me. It does not need to be loud. It just needs to be honest.
Each space offers something different. The digital world allows for discovery and distance. The physical world invites presence and reflection. I am grateful to work in both.
In a visually saturated world, how do you build an aesthetic that remains intimate yet powerful?
I try not to compete with the noise. I focus on stillness. On emotion. On making something that feels like a secret. If a piece whispers but stays in your mind, I think it has done more than something that shouts for attention and is forgotten the next day.
Power does not have to mean scale. It can come from restraint. I spend a lot of time refining, removing, simplifying. The goal is not to impress. It is to feel. If a single gesture holds more weight than a complex scene, I follow that.
Intimacy comes from honesty. If the work is true to me, it will find the people it needs to find.
Looking ahead, which themes are calling to you? What are you hoping to explore in your future work?
Right now I feel called to explore themes of collapse and transformation. The quiet undoing that happens before something new begins. I am interested in the space between endings and rebirth. The stillness after loss. The confusion of becoming.
I want to explore emotional memory more deeply, especially the kind that lives in the body. How do we carry what we have been through without speaking it? How do we shed old versions of ourselves and honor what they gave us?
I do not know exactly what the next pieces will look like. But I know they will live in that space between mourning and becoming. Between what we let go of and what we are learning to hold.
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