The artists

Ramiro Albán is an Ecuadorian artist and portraitist whose punk-urban-pop animal characters live on canvas, on fabric, and, through augmented reality, in motion. His work interprets the energies and vibrations between humans and animals, rendered in a vivid, engraved-line style that moves across acrylics, glass, ferrofluid, gears and AR.

His art-printed fashion has walked at New York Fashion Week with Fashion Designers of Latin America and headlined the Power of Words show at Doha Design District, where each garment carried a digital layer of his own creation; the Doha show was covered by Euronews. Collectors of his portraits include Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom and William Shatner, and a share of every work goes to animal shelters around the world.

At The Digital Loom, Albán weaves the whole evening’s thesis: his printed garments take the runway in fabric, then come alive through the AR layer above it.

The collection began unintentionally in a Toronto studio on Queen West. Jeffro pinned loose canvases to the walls as he worked; leftover paint, wiped brushes, discarded materials and visiting friends’ marks accumulated until the walls themselves became the work, mural-like compositions layered from years of intention and accident.

Each piece is cut from that process: mixed media on drywall, carrying the history of everything made on top of it. What begins as a surface becomes an archive. What begins as residue becomes composition.