When people see OMD, they naturally think of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. That’s understandable, though in this case the abbreviation stands for Old Man Dreaming. I conceived this image while listening to OMD’s “Bauhaus Staircase” and watching its music video.
The piece depicts an elderly man dreaming of paradise—reimagining the story of Adam and Eve, with Eve remaining eternally youthful in an enclosed garden (pairi daēza, meaning “walled enclosure”). I rendered Eve and the vegetation in metallic blue tones to create a surrealistic effect, while portraying the old man—who represents Adam—in a realistic style. Instead of the traditional apple tree, I chose to include a banana tree. “OMD of Pairi Daiza” serves as a contemporary interpretation of “Dreamin’ Laokoon,” an ink drawing I created in the 1980s.
The artwork consists of various graphic elements—plants and human torsos—that I developed through a multi-stage process. I began by providing instructions to an AI system, then refined the generated images, and ultimately combined them into a cohesive composition