Imagining a Post-virus World With Timo Helgert ‘s “The Return of Nature”

With scenes from Milan to New York, Timo Helgert reimagines city spaces with expanses of blooming meadows and fluttering butterflies. We speak to the digital artist in an exclusive interview.

“The Return of Nature” goes the name of Germn artist Timo Helgert's latest project, an ongoing series of places taken back by nature – a blooming of daisies and a reappearance of butterflies amongst some of the most iconic and photographed places in the world, such as the famous luxury shopping galleria Vittoria Emanuele II in Milan, or in the middle of a subway wagon in New York City.

These are just depictions of some of the cities most affected by COVID-19 made possible by CGI and digital art by Timo Helgert, who started posting his work on his Instagram profile VACADES. What started as an idea during quarantine has resulted in the works going viral, with more than one million views in two days.

The cities repopulated by nature and its main "inhabitants", perhaps serve as a timely reminder that it is us man who are guests on this earth, and not the other way around with nature. We (virtually) met up with the artist to share with us about this project in which technology has become the main support medium for communicating on a global level.

We are experiencing difficult times and nature seems to have taken up its place in our cities and in our lives, was it something you reflected on when creating your digital works?

I see my Instagram page as a playground and a laboratory for new ideas and concepts. My followers can expect multiple posts per week and I want it to be very interactive. Many ideas and videos are directly influenced by the comments and reactions of my fan base. The original idea was based on the train and subsequently the subway train cars. I reinvented a series of different urban interiors, from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the interior of the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Berlin subway. When quarantine during Covid 19 occurred, I felt the isolation and loneliness for the first time, which must have been very difficult for people in other countries that has been happening for weeks already. So I thought about the topic a lot, and realised that most mainstream media was trying to instill create fear, causing people to stress out. So I wanted to resume my existing series of works but make them more beautiful, edifying and stimulating.

What symbols did you use and why? Is there any particular meaning behind them, for instance, butterflies, or a big snake in Berlin?

The meaning behind my works are very simple. My art is focused on minimalism and on the return to the simplicity of nature. It doesn't need to be an insanely detailed painting, a small butterfly is pure art in itself. The snake is outside of this series and was an initial concept that is however part of a reflection on how public places feel now with emptiness.

How would you describe your art and your approach to art? What's your story?

I started at the age of 12 when my father brought the first computer home. It was an old desktop PC without any internet and with the Windows 95 operating system. It was standing in the corridor of our house and I liked getting closer to technology and information technology. We had no games, but with Word and Paint, I created the most imaginative invitation letters for my birthday parties. That's how I got passionate about design, logo design, vfx video and motion graphics. I am self-taught, so I didn't follow any professional or specific education, I studied Media Sciences in university, but it didn't really help me. The biggest influence was the movies, the Internet and the environment where I grew up. I am really inspired by different works of art, films around me and I try to redesign them.

What is the future of art? And how will it change the way we enjoy it?

I see augmented reality -AR as a key point in the future. Similar to how the smartphone changed our generation. Right now this fantastic digital world is accessible only through a small screen. A small window inside. But imagine being able to combine our real world with digital, instead of having two separate spaces. This is AR for me. The combination of both, which opens up new and vast possibilities for art, design, life, workflow. I think everything is becoming more personal. Our relationship with art will change. While in the past the medium showed something to the viewer, it is now a relationship between both the viewer and the medium and the creator - they influence each other. Therefore places like Instagram and social networks will be the places where interactive art can be freely explored. Everything will be faster and interconnected, in my opinion.