Aspen Digital Art Award recipient Xavier Solé Mora launches winning artwork for the Aspen Collection

London based artist Xavier Solé Mora has created an artwork for Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited (Aspen) that is inspired by Francisco Goya’s etching Disparate de tontos (Fools’ Folly) (1816-19) from the series Los Disparates (The Follies).

Fools’ Feast (2018) presents a dream-like scene that invites the audience to be absorbed by the preposterous. 

Five hippos float in a dark void. The enormous mammals move their weightless bodies gracefully, creating a mesmerising spectacle in an unidentifiable expanse of emptiness. This gentle choreography disguises the danger they pose in the wild, and in watching we are compelled to magnify or minimise the perception of risk posed by these enormous, unknowable creatures.

For the past four years, Aspen and the Contemporary Art Society have been working together to uncover the most exciting young talent in the field of digital art. The Digital Art Award represents Aspen’s commitment to cutting edge creative practice and reflects the Contemporary Art Society’s mission to identify and support emerging artists and showcase their work.

The Aspen Digital Art Award offers a bursary to a recent postgraduate to develop a new digital artwork at a pivotal point in their career. In acknowledgement of Aspen’s global reach, the award was opened up for the first time to graduates from two international Universities; NYU Tisch School of the Arts in New York and Zurich University of the Arts in Zurich as well as two London-based universities, Slade School of Fine Art and Camberwell College of Arts. Xavier Solé Mora is a graduate of Camberwell College of Arts.