Oelhan, whose real name is Jordan Coelho, is a French digital artist, motion designer and VJ based in Paris.His work blends 3D elements with contrasting color schemes into a dark, psychedelic style, exploring conflicting human emotions such as sadness and happiness or joy and fear.,He labels this approach “soft psychedelia”, built from unsettling characters, odd facial expressions and flickering textures.
Coelho began making animated gifs for Tumblr without realizing digital art was a recognized field, and has said reaching his current level of craft took him ten years.He is a graduate of a BTS program in graphic design who trained himself in animation. Coelho has worked for clients including Adobe and Spotify, and been featured in press coverage tied to Adobe Live, Adobe Global Creator and Visual Atelier 8.He joined SuperRare in January 2021.Two months later, he made his debut sale there with Amphora for 3.5 ETH.He had made the piece after a European train trip that included a visit to the Capitoline Museums in Rome, drawing on the antique pottery he saw there.His single-edition works on SuperRare have since regularly sold for upwards of 2 ETH each, alongside more affordable editioned pieces on OpenSea.He followed it with two more pottery-inspired pieces, Amphora II, drawing on a 2018 trip to Japan and Taiwan, and Amphora III, which combines antique pottery with tarot imagery.,He has stressed that his animated portraits, such as Mood Switcher, are entirely hand-designed and animated, with no automation or artificial intelligence involved.
In May 2021, Oelhan collaborated with the American visual artist Diana Sinclair on Beholders, a pair of moving portraits each titled Beholder. The project was created to amplify Black visibility and depictions of Black beauty on the blockchain.As part of the SOMA Collective,he produced SOMA Cards, a set of collectible cards made for exhibitions the collective held in South Korea and Japan.He has said the cards draw on his childhood love of Yu-Gi-Oh, an influence that still resonates in his work.In September 2022, Oelhan was invited to give a conference on his work and process at Pictoplasma Berlin.His work was also shown as part of the SOMA Collective exhibition “Esprit de Corps” on the platform Foundation.He also contributed to MILLION, a collective motion-design piece for MAPP Montréal curated by Rémi Vincent.
