Review by Kurt Beers, Director of BEERS London (2026)
Alexandra’s artwork possess a rare ability to be simultaneously seductive and unsettling, drawing the viewer into complex visual environments that linger long after the initial encounter.
What immediately stands out is the sophistication of her visual language. Her background in Photography and Law clearly informs the conceptual depth of the work, yet the artworks never become overly theoretical. Instead, they operate through a compelling balance of beauty, discomfort, and psychological tension. The imagery feels dreamlike and dystopian, unfolding as layered allegories that reward prolonged viewing.
The compositional complexity of the works is particularly impressive. Across the series, figures, symbols, historical references, technological motifs, and contemporary cultural markers are woven together with remarkable confidence. There is an extraordinary amount of visual dialogue occurring within each piece, yet the compositions remain cohesive and controlled. The viewer is continually invited to move through the imagery, discovering new relationships and meanings with each return.
What I find most compelling is the way she creates spaces that feel simultaneously familiar and otherworldly. Her artworks seem to exist outside conventional time, merging mythology, fashion, technology, art history, and contemporary anxieties into immersive worlds of their own. There is a magical quality to this synthesis, one that transforms the works from social critique into fully realised psychological landscapes.
The strongest aspect of her practice is the uniqueness of her vision. In an increasingly crowded visual culture, her work feels distinctly her own. The artworks demonstrate a high level of technical refinement while maintaining intellectual ambition and emotional resonance. This combination positions her practice exceptionally well within contemporary conversations surrounding technology, identity, power, and image-making.
From a professional perspective, Alexandra’s practice possesses significant potential for institutional, curatorial, and academic engagement. The interdisciplinary foundation of the work creates numerous entry points for dialogue across contemporary art, media theory, philosophy, and technology studies.
Overall, this is an exceptionally polished and ambitious body of work. The artworks are visually captivating, conceptually rich, and emotionally charged. They demonstrate a mature artistic voice with considerable room for future growth and exploration.
What Remains: On Being Human in the Algorithm Age
Text by Peggy Schoenegg (2026)
At first glance, Alexandra King Fekete’s compositions recall the layered complexity of old masters like Hieronymus Bosch—scenes dense with simultaneous narratives, where multiple actions unfold at once and new details keep surfacing the longer one looks. What initially appears as seductive imagery turns into nightmare-like visions. The artist has been preoccupied with dreams since childhood, once making a habit of sketching them each morning before they could fade. Over time, these drawings evolved into a distinct artistic vocabulary that transforms personal nocturnal imaginations into critical reflections on contemporary existence.
Her works draw viewers in with their aesthetic scenery. Figures appear porcelain-like with glossy, polished skin, bodies decorated and posed in a seemingly festive exhilaration, staged for display. On closer look, however, the mood shifts. Expressions seem off, postures suggest discomfort, and signs of suffering become apparent. Woven into these scenes are current technologies—smartphones, XR interfaces, surveillance systems, and robotic elements—breaking with the historical register and anchoring the work in the present. These interferences situate ancient archetypes within what the artist calls the "algorithm ghetto"—a technocratic system that increasingly determines how we think, behave, and assign value.
Central to her practice is a custom-built generative AI tool, developed and adapted to her specific artistic needs. She uses this application to generate imagery that forms the foundation of each work. The technology enables a digital mode of visualization with a dreamlike quality. Yet the tool remains precisely that—a tool. It produces raw material, but selection, refinement, and the processual work that follows are entirely in the artist's hands. Each final piece results from a meticulous process of assembly and integration, resulting in large-format prints.
What emerges from this practice is a sustained reflection on what it means to be human in an age defined by our entanglement with new technology. Alexandra King Fekete’s nightmarish tableaux do not simply critique; they make visible the contradictions we live with. Idealized bodies exist alongside mechanical intrusions. Classical beauty meets algorithmic distortions and visualities. Seduction masks alienation. The depicted figures appear self-absorbed yet trapped, caught between display and distress, between the organic and the engineered. In this fusion, the artist reflects on a society caught between potential and challenges—where every technological advancement reshapes not only our capabilities but our sense of our self and our shared values. As the boundaries between human and machine blur, so do the contours of individuality and society, shaping a new understanding of humankind. Her work makes these tensions visible without resolving them. Alexandra King Fekete invites viewers to confront the technologized realities and to ask what remains when the excitement of the new subsides.
Artist Statement:
From a young age, I was drawn into my dreams or perhaps more accurately, my nightmares. Their haunting, dystopian narratives fascinated me as I tried to decipher their meanings, rooted in the collective unconscious and human power structures. Though I no longer draw them each morning, these nightmares have evolved into artworks that reflect our increasingly algorithmic reality, a technocratic world that quietly shapes how we think, behave, assign value, and perceive freedom.
In my work, allegorical imagery, mythological symbolism, grotesque historical references, and the visual language of fashion collide with contemporary digital systems. I am interested in how algorithms and machine logic preserve the illusion of freedom and participation while reshaping individuality, perception, memory, and social behavior. The ancient logic of “bread and circuses” has not disappeared, it has simply become digital.
I use generative tools and custom programming not only as medium but as method: these technologies allow me to examine the very systems they embody, revealing the paradox of a world in which machines no longer merely mediate power, but increasingly constitute it.
Each work is created through a distinctive process that combines custom programming, digital image generation, and extensive manual refinement. Rather than treating technology as a neutral tool, I use it as both medium and subject — allowing the very systems I critique to participate in the creation of the work. This approach enables highly detailed, large-scale compositions where computational precision and human intervention remain in constant dialogue.
Bio
AKF812 (Alexandra Kinga Fekete) is a Hungarian-born artist based in Berlin. Trained in law in Budapest, where she worked as a corporate lawyer, she later studied photography at Arts University Bournemouth in the UK. She built an international career in editorial, portrait, fashion, and commercial photography in London and Berlin. Her work has been recognized with a Silver Epica Award and inclusion in The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Photography. She has taught photography at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest and at Miami Ad School Berlin.
Selected Exhibitions
BBA Artist Prize Exhibition, Berlin (group)
John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London (group)
Decoupages: Three European Photographers, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy (group; curated by Bruno Corà)
MEO Contemporary Art Collection, Budapest (solo; curated by Barna Bencsik)
formELLEs, Institut Hongrois de Paris / Paris Photo, Paris (group)
Frauen Museum Wiesbaden, Germany (group)
American Fashion Award Exhibition, New York (group)
Creative Future Exhibition, Creative Review Award, London (group)
Kieselbach Gallery, Budapest (group)
Blitz Gallery, Budapest (group)
Photo München, Munich (group)
Slippy Floor, Pavlov’s Dog, Berlin (group)
Geschossen + Gedruckt, Städtische Galerie Lüdenscheid, Germany (group)
Ne(a)t/Women on Women, KOGART Gallery, Budapest (group)
Skirt, London (group)
World Young Photographers Exhibition, Ljubljana (group)
Awards
Epica Award (Silver), Paris
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