Kalman Pool earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019, followed by an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 2021. During this time, he participated in the Swatch Art Peace Hotel’s artist residency, where he was commissioned to create a Swatch X You artist special watch. In 2023, Kalman was invited to design a large-scale installation “WEAVVY” for Lincoln China, which was prominently featured at the Auto Shanghai Show. In 2024, as the sole Chinese artist invited, he created a large-scale immersive installation for the Balloon Museum in Europe, touring various countries across the continent.

Inspired by BioArt and natural history, Kalman’s interdisciplinary work explores the complex relationship between the virtual and the physical. He creatively merges these realms by crafting VR-generated bio-mutated phantasms, inflatable simulacra, and invented pictographic language installations.

Drawing inspiration from the inflatable decoys used by the U.S. “Ghost Army” in WWII, Kalman integrates VR techniques and inflatables to create installations and digital works. His use of mechanical reproduction challenges the notion of authenticity, while the dynamic vitality of his sculptures transcends the limitations of mere simulacra.

“Despite being an artwork made using a mechanical reproduction method and a simulacrum simulated through utopian VR, each of my inflatable sculptures gives life in virtue of its physically inflated body with the possibility of interaction with its natural surroundings.”

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