Alison Blickle: Future Ruins
On the eve of her Chelsea opening, I met Alison Blickle at Kravets Wehby Gallery to talk about Future Ruins. The paintings depict radiant, staged figures set in a dystopian future where nature has vanished and people connect only through digital avatars. At once alluring and unsettling, these works blur beauty, grief, and technology, offering both fantasy and warning.
I met Alison Blickle on the eve of her opening at Kravets Wehby Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. The paintings for Future Ruins were already on the walls, glowing under the lights, the room still hushed before the crowd. In that moment, anticipation thick but the space still private, we spoke about beauty, technology, and grief.
Blickle’s figures are radiant, staged, almost too beautiful. She doesn’t hide from it.
“That’s intentional,” she told me.
The new body of work is set in a dystopian future where nature no longer exists as we know it. People still long for connection to something larger, but the only way they can feel it is through avatars inside digital landscapes.
“You create an avatar of yourself, what you wish you looked like, and swim in oceans that no longer exist, walk through forests that have been erased. These paintings are portraits of those avatars. The beauty is stunning, but it’s also artificial. They’re not real people. They’re curated images of who someone chooses to be.”
This dystopian thread runs through Future Ruins like a warning. Filters, AI-generated faces, bodies shaped digitally, all of it feels uncomfortably close.
“It’s science fiction, but it’s also about right now,” she said.
The Cinematic Image
When I asked about the cinematic quality of her compositions, Blickle traced it back to photography.
“I’ve studied images from the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, and I’m inspired by fashion photographers working today. They’re some of the most inventive artists, even though they’re placed in a commercial zone. Their editorials often echo classical painting, history paintings, big groups enacting narratives, dramatic compositions. They create little worlds. That’s what I admire, and what I try to do myself. I stage the image like a photographer before I paint.”
Her women hold archetypes, muses, goddesses, rebels, but they’re also deeply personal. Blickle admits they’ve often been alter egos.
“They get to do things I wish I could do. I live vicariously through them.”
Isolation and Grief
With Future Ruins, that connection is sharper. She spoke about grief and isolation shaping this work.
“For many years I painted large groups interacting. These figures feel more isolated, and many are sad. That’s where the personal heart comes in.”
The result is a body of work that oscillates between allure and critique. The figures are dazzling, but their perfection is unsettling. They carry both the fantasy of beauty and the dystopia of its collapse.
They are avatars, beautiful, artificial, and haunted by longing.
Exhibition: Future Ruins
Alison Blickle
Kravets Wehby Gallery, Chelsea, NYC
September 4 – October 4
Q: What is Alison Blickle’s Future Ruins about?
A: The exhibition imagines a dystopian future where nature has collapsed and people connect through digital avatars. Her radiant figures are both alluring and unsettling, blurring beauty, grief, and technology.
Q: Where is Future Ruins showing?
A: The show is on view at Kravets Wehby Gallery in Chelsea, NYC, from September 4 to October 4, 2025.
Q: Why is Alison Blickle’s work important?
A: Blickle stages cinematic paintings that draw from photography, fashion, and mythology. Her figures act as alter egos, archetypes, and cultural mirrors, exploring beauty’s allure and its collapse in the digital age.
Inside the Cannes Festival: A Lens on Glamour, Authenticity, and the Unexpected
A behind-the-scenes visual diary from the 78th Cannes Film Festival glamour, tension, and cinematic intimacy captured by Peter Koloff.
Every year in May, the Croisette transforms. Cannes becomes not just a celebration of cinema, but a magnet for beauty, branding, and bold moments both polished and raw.
This year I covered the festival from the opening day through the closing ceremony. Days flowed from morning market screenings to late night premieres. The Martinez Hotel pulsed as a hub where one minute you'd spot a major director slipping out quietly, the next an influencer entourage staging elaborate photo ops on the stairs.
What struck me most? The contrasts:
Film lovers in vintage tuxedos grabbing burgers at McDonald’s between screenings.
Young content creators sneaking behind the scenes shots with the Martinez chefs.
A stylist from Elie Saab, off-duty, glowing in the sunset after a week dressing A listers.
Conversations with true cinephiles people who still come here for the films, eyes lit up after a 9 AM screening in Salle Debussy.
Cannes is both spectacle and substance. Yes, there’s curated glamour but underneath, there’s still passion for storytelling. The camera sees both.
For brands, artists, and creators navigating this world: the opportunity is in embracing both layers the beautiful surface and the authentic narrative behind it. That’s where lasting images live.
Photography & content strategy inquiries: Contact here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What inspired you to shoot behind the scenes at Cannes?
A: I wanted to photograph the moments no one notices the quiet between flashes, the human energy behind curated glamour. It’s where truth hides.
Q: What makes this coverage different from typical event photography?
A: I wasn’t assigned. I embedded myself. I moved like a ghost in a world of spectacle and that gave me access to something more honest than staged red carpets.
Q: How does AI factor into your creative process?
A: The camera captures what I see. AI helps me put what I see into words. It lets me shape the story faster without losing what makes it personal.
Years before Cannes, I found myself alone in Venice at 3AM with a camera and no plan. This is what I captured.