Darklunni is the name under which the Ukrainian artist Alexis Olin creates digital art and 35mm film photography.Born in Kyiv, Olin works across painting, sculpture, photography, illustration and textile design. Gloved hands, eyes, blades and rabbits appear throughout the work as recurring symbols.
Olin's practice began in comics.,From 1999, Olin published illustrations in Ukrainian magazines including K9, X3M and Moloko, and served as K9's editor-in-chief from 2001 to 2009.Olin organized the graphic-novel festival 9 World in Kyiv and sat on the jury of the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France in 2006.In an interview, Olin named the Renaissance painters Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and the comics artist Moebius, among personal influences.In 2016, Olin founded the Ukrainian clothing brand Métrique, translating paintings and photographs into wearable design.The practice has since become a hybrid dialogue between analog and digital media, extending into sculpture through collectible rabbit figures that carry the same symbolic universe into physical form.
Darklunni released So much plastic on OpenSea in 2021. Right Click Save featured the work among twenty-two Ukrainian artists in a tribute published days into Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.In January 2024, Olin's card In the Name of the Memes #193 was minted as the first card of the sixth season of 6529's The Memes.Minted the following year for 6529's Meme Lab, I Became A Meme Before The Memes #67 commemorates “The Memes pARTy”, an exhibition at Lezar House gallery in Barcelona, Spain.
