Alexander Wessely’s World of Stillness and Spectacle

At home in Stockholm, Alexander Wessely is surrounded by heirlooms, artifacts, and objects collected over decades—a quiet counterpoint to the sprawling, high-intensity worlds he helps conjure for global stages. We’re speaking about his apartment, a space he shares with his wife and two daughters. There are 450-year-old fragments from a Cretan church, marble sculptures of his own design, a Dala horse gifted by IKEA’s CEO after a 40-piece collaboration, and children’s laughter faintly echoing down the hallway.

Alexander, an artist known for his multidisciplinary storytelling, began his creative path first with graffiti, then later photography, fashion, music, sculpture, and large-scale installation. Over the years his distinctive visual language—marked by its textured intensity—has drawn in collaborators like Avicii, Swedish House Mafia, The Weeknd, and more recently, the boundary-pushing AI-inflected artist Anyma.

In 2023 Alexander’s work on Anyma’s “Genesys” show at the Las Vegas Sphere became one of the most talked about moments in immersive art, pairing digital spectacle with raw human presence. But behind all of it is someone still chasing meaning, still asking what’s real, and still wondering whether peace lies in a Greek monastery or the chaos of creation.

I thought we might start off by talking a little bit about your home, which it looks like I’m reaching you at now. I saw the photos from one of your home tours online. It looked really beautiful.

Then I saw a note about your partner being an interior designer, and it made a lot more sense. Can you tell me a little bit about your place?

Yeah, definitely. So we haven’t been here for too long, but I would say the furniture—at least pieces of it—has been with us for over 10 years. It’s become this sort of “mirror” of us, our interests, and our travels. I’ve been with my wife for 15 years soon, and it’s kind of crazy—it’s almost like a place of memorabilia. A lot of the stuff is also heirlooms from my grandmother and grandfather from Greece.

We had some issues with the fireplace here, so it’s a bit chaotic. But this one, for instance, is a piece from Greece, from Crete, actually. It’s 450 years old—found in the basement of a church. We brought it home three years ago.

This is one of my own pieces in marble. Over here, we have another piece from my grandmother. It’s a painting from the 1800s. Basically everything is almost like walking down memory lane in an insane way. This is from the Greek Orthodox church that I was born in.

We have some contemporary stuff too, like the Utrecht chairs and stuff. But this—this is what they used to drink wine out of years ago in Greece. That’s like a legit old piece.

From my travels working, we’ve also been collecting stuff along the way. I actually designed a furniture collection for IKEA—40 pieces—about three years ago. The CEO gave me this. It’s a Dala horse from that territory of Sweden. It’s very well-known.

We have a lot of things like this. It’s very much a mirror of ourselves and our interests, but also our travels. Both me and my wife are quite nostalgic people, so it’s very comforting—especially since I travel a lot for work—to come home to this and be surrounded by all these memories.

We’ve been in this apartment for about 18 months. The one prior to this one looked more or less the same, but this one is slightly larger. It’s the same aesthetic—built around 1900. It’s located in a part of Stockholm that was basically where you had all the prostitutes and stuff 100 years ago.

At one point it sort of switched. Now it’s become this kind of bougie area in a way, but with a lot of creatives and artists. There are the old brick-style buildings, a lot of UK influence—it’s almost like old brownstones.

I think I read in a feature that you have a son or a daughter?

I have two daughters—demons.

I’m really amazed at how well-organized and put together it is, especially with kids that age.

Me too, actually. But we’ve managed to create their little section that they like. For some amazing reason, they’ve found this invisible wall, so they’re not super interested in going too crazy over here. But one thing they do love is going crazy on the grand piano at like seven in the morning.

My wife plays—or, well, she used to play. Now my oldest daughter has just started. And one of my closest friends is a concert-level pianist, so we’ve had the pleasure of him playing a lot when we arrange things at home. I also just think it’s beautiful.

Tell me a little bit about where you went to school—how you set out on your creative path.

That’s quite a long and messy story. I had a rough time as a kid—adapting, focusing, and in one way, fitting in. I was heavy into graffiti from a young age, so that was basically what I was doing—roaming around Sweden doing graffiti.

When it was time to go to high school, my mother sort of terrorized the principal of this media school outside Stockholm. She got me in there. You could choose different directions, and I chose photography because it seemed to offer the most freedom. Like, I could be away from school for three months doing personal things and come back with proof that I did something.

Without much purpose, I got into photography thanks to my mother. I quickly fell in love with it. It gave me the same kind of love I had for graffiti, but now I could get a direct response. It was a great way to express myself and experiment.

This was around 2006 or 2007 when I was 17, and everything was new to me. I was in Photoshop manipulating images—it was an exciting time. From there I started assisting photographers in fashion. I worked with some of Sweden’s top fashion photographers, and I was intrigued by the play of light—how you could sculpt an object with light and see the response in real time. That became one of my driving forces.

After a couple of years though, I started feeling hopeless. By 20 I wasn’t sure what to focus on. I felt lost. I started exploring my true interests, like music, which has always inspired me. I thought maybe I should work with musicians and help tell their stories visually.

We started emailing record labels in the US, saved for nine months, and then went to LA for three months. My girlfriend, now my wife, and I did this for two or three years. We even came up with this “genius” idea of buying a car when we arrived, sleeping in it, and selling it before we left.

But by 23 nothing was really happening—just some pro bono portfolio-building work. Then one day I was in a Walmart, and I passed out from what I thought was a heart attack but turned out to be a panic attack. I was very stressed an anxious at the time. My wife and I decided it wasn’t sustainable to keep doing this, so we planned to go back to Sweden.

In our last two weeks in LA I got a response to an old email I’d sent through a mutual friend. It was from No I.D.’s Dion Wilson, who was VP of Def Jam at the time. He was intrigued by my aesthetic—black-and-white, analog photography—and introduced me to musicians like J. Cole and Big Sean, who were new at the time.

Around the same time Instagram was new and Avicii’s manager reached out to me. He was like, “Interesting that you’re Swedish—let’s work together.” Next thing I know I’m being picked up in Santa Monica and flown to Amsterdam to join Avicii on tour. That was my first time working with him but we stayed great friends until his passing.

From there I was stuck in the music universe for a while. But I always felt that same pull I’d had with graffiti and photography—this curiosity to explore new things. I eventually stopped working with musicians for a while and returned to fashion. I worked with Vogue Italia and their talent program in 2015. But again, I felt I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

In 2016 or 2017, I began exploring my Greek heritage. I eventually found a third-generation sculpture family in Meteora four hours north of Athens and spent years learning sculptural techniques from them. I would go back and forth like this for two years. I’d visit them in Meteora for two weeks, then go down to Athens, then back to Stockholm, and repeat. I started exhibiting my work in 2018 and 2019.

Around that time, Swedish House Mafia reached out to me about creating multimedia visuals for their comeback. That eventually led to me working with The Weeknd—and ended up leading to this mess of working across multiple mediums.

It was around this time that I let my guard down for the first time in my life. Instead of searching all the time I started accepting what was coming to me, taking it in, and working with it. Since then I’ve been doing a variety of work, like the largest sculpture exhibit in Scandinavia. I kept one foot in music and one foot in art with some institutions and theaters and museums.

Your wife sounds pretty incredible to have been through all these crazy journeys with you. Tell me about how you met.

I was interning at a creative studio and my wife was a copywriter there. This is basically where we met when we were 19. We clicked, and our interests and values aligned in a crazy way.

Actually all these first trips we did to America between age 20 and 23, she financed them with her savings by working in a café while I was working for free building my portfolio. So she has definitely been the backbone of this whole journey and still is. Obviously balancing all of this with two children is quite a challenge. But yeah, she’s the structure that keeps this thing up.

Would your career have gone the same direction had you not met her?

No, no. In a lot of ways I’m very impulsive and irresponsible, and this is where she completes me—or complements me. She’s very focused, strategic, and organized. All of my flaws, she has always sort of filled in behind-the-scenes in a way.

I don’t think it would have been likely for me to get where I am without her. I have no idea how it would’ve even started without her. From the beginning I didn’t even have the means to go to America. So it’s fascinating how fate works and how life works. Without her I’d probably still be roaming around here doing graffiti or something.

So she’s still involved in your practice and the new projects that are coming in?

Yes, she’s involved in the studio on more of an organizational level. We have three creatives and a product manager in the studio, and she’s basically the mother to everyone in a way.

Tell me about those early days. I think you said you were 19 and still really into graffiti. What kind of music were you listening to?

It was quite a mix. Almost like how I’ve been a bit lost and searching in my work, it’s been the same with music. At the time it was everything from Mobb Deep to Metallica to Stravinsky. It was this almost schizophrenic mix of metal, hip-hop, and classical. I ended up working with a lot of electronic artists, but I wasn’t too into electronic music at the time.

A lot of your story talks about how your process was motivated by self-doubt or struggle, or trying to find your bearings. How did you find your voice?

Last night I fell asleep at six in the morning. I have a hard time sleeping because I’m constantly questioning myself. Am I focusing on the right thing? Even though I’ve tried to let my guard down and let things come to me instead of fighting them, I still go through these moments—like once a month—where I question if this path I’m on is right.

Traveling five or six months a year, being away from my kids, my wife, my parents—does this have enough meaning? Is it meaningful enough to me?

Time moves fast. That’s also why I have a huge obsession with wristwatches, especially old ones. They’ve become like breadcrumbs through my career. I can look at a piece and remember what was happening when I got it, almost like memorabilia. It’s also a reminder of how sensitive time is.

It’s interesting how one part of my practice—sculpture—is permanent, a staple of tradition, while another leg of my career is temporary, happening in real-time, almost the opposite. Last year I spent January to April in Greece working on sculptures and reflecting on the world my family and I created.

Then in a second, everything shifted. I was working with The Weeknd on his new concept last year. It’s an ongoing conversation with myself. I like it and hate it at the same time.

I’d love to be at peace, buy an old monastery in Meteora, and just enjoy life. But I’m addicted to the chaos, the burning side of my work. It’s a double-edged sword. I dislike it, but I need it. That questioning—maybe that’s doubt, actually.

Did having kids change your process at all?

In one way, yes. I’m someone who easily feels guilty—letting people down and so on. It wasn’t hard for me when they were born, but now that they’re proper little humans it’s tough.

My six-year-old especially makes me question my decisions. It’s more about guilt than motivation. Am I doing this for the right reasons? Does it mean enough to me? I try to be more delicate with my decisions because of that.

I wanted to ask about your work at the Sphere. The timing and context of your work there seems so perfect—new technology, AI, and questions of what’s real and what’s not. Instead of battling against that, your work seemed to lean into it. Did those ideas guide the project?

Yeah. When I met Anyma for the first time it was very interesting for me. He’s a musician with such a heavy layer of visual presence. His shows in the past have almost been more like audiovisual installations in a lot of ways, but presented in this more commercial context. Hearing him speak about what he wanted to achieve with the Sphere gave me a lot of energy and inspiration.

And then we started discussing these concepts. He had this idea of creating a “cybernetic opera,” and had been working for a long time with a Swedish composer who had a partnership with an engineer and professor. Together they had created robotic cello player using two industrial robotic arms. So when I heard Anyma say “cybernetic opera,” I felt like, “OK, this is almost a given. I need to integrate them into this concept.” Without even knowing more about the content I thought, “This is the first brick we’re going to lay: these robotic cello players.”

As the project evolved it became this constant dance between serenity and chaos. From April to December when it premiered, it was a period full of new experiences and challenges. The project was like crazy beast to tame. In a way, the Sphere worked on us as much as we worked on it. We really had to collaborate with it to get the best results—whether in how things were shot, how the post-production came together, or the overall vision.

It was a completely different experience for me, working with a 180-degree projection and considering all these factors. When I joined the project Anyma had already been working with his art director, Alessio, for four years. They had created this world and when I came on board, we began discussing adding acts to the Sphere performance.

The first act, Genesis, was centered around a robot synonymous with Anyma. The second act, Humana, was my main contribution. This act introduced guest performers in a much more physical, human way—focusing on presence, emotion, and the raw texture of skin. The goal was to make the audience feel them in a nearly holographic way. The last act, Quantum, was about merging the human and robotic worlds. By this point humanity felt like a memory but is still very present in the space.

Seeing these pieces come to life was incredible. I’m particularly proud of the piece I did with FKA Twigs. She’s such a force, and I was so impressed by her performance and how it translated into that space. To my knowledge nothing like it had ever been seen before in this kind of environment. It felt like this 140-foot character coming to life.

How did that part of your collaboration come together?

A lot of the collaborators involved in the project had synergies that started with Anyma. With Twigs, it began with a collaborative song that was being premiered. We wanted the guest performers to be there for a reason—not just because they’re fantastic artists, but to have something meaningful behind their presence.

So it started with this collaborative song between Anyma and the guest performer. After that, we worked together to translate that energy into the project. It was the same process with Grimes. For me, it felt natural because of my previous experience working with musicians. The process itself was very forgiving thanks to the amazing CG team we had. I didn’t have to worry about much beyond ensuring the performances were as strong as possible and filmed in a way that made sense.

With this technology, where there’s so little existing infrastructure, how do you even begin to conceptualize how it might look? What was your planning process like?

We basically started by creating a sphere-shaped canvas in 3D. Then we explored ideas without worrying about what was or wasn’t possible. We shaped it exactly as we wanted to see it without constraints.

Funny enough one of the first things I worked on was the stage design and scenography. I noticed that in previous shows inside the Sphere musicians were often positioned on the floor blending into the crowd. Because the space is so massive and vertically structured, it could be hard to distinguish the artist from certain angles. I knew from the start that I wanted to elevate Anyma above the crowd.

This led to the concept of the pillars rising out of the audience. There are three pillars, each about 25 feet tall. Anyma was positioned on the center one with the robotic cellos on the left and right. In the center pillar, we built a large-scale replica of a quantum computer, which acted as a light installation with strobes built inside. We also incorporated smoke and haze machines to create moments where the screen went pitch black. The audience would feel like they were outside in a void, with these monolithic pillars rising from it.

That concept made the most sense to me early on. It felt achievable and powerful but we faced challenges, especially since no one had ever covered the screen in this way before. That’s also why we made the pillars fully transparent when not lit, so they’d create a floating effect when inactive.

Had you seen a show at the Sphere before you designed this?

No I had only been to their exhibitions. I’d never seen a music show in there. I did a lot of online studying and research, and the Sphere team sent us a lot of material to view. In a lot of ways how it lives on through other people’s perspectives, like from someone’s phone, is a huge factor to consider. You have to calculate for that since sadly 90% of the audience experiencing this will probably do so digitally. If 250,000 people see the show live, millions will see it on their phones. So we really wanted it to translate well in that way too.

What was your experience like the first time you actually saw your work being performed in the Sphere?

I was more impressed the first time I went there for their National Geographic-type show. Seeing it person for the first time was so overwhelming. By the time I saw my work in the Sphere, I had already been living in the VR version of it for months. It almost felt like I’d already seen it a bunch of times.

I was definitely happy—happy to see the scale of it in real life and happy to actually be there as a physical person instead of a digital one. But I would say the first time I visited the Sphere, about six months before, was the real moment when it hit me. I realized that this is truly the premier stage in the world for this kind of mix of entertainment and art. The possibilities felt endless—almost in a frustrating way—because there were so many things you could achieve.

If you could choose any current performer to have a show in the Sphere now that you’re so familiar with the technology and capabilities, who do you think would be really awesome to see there?

I think it would be very interesting to see Aphex Twin perform in there. Or Arca. On a personal level, those would really excite me—they’d create something very special.

On a more commercial level, I’m pretty sure Ye would create something insane in there too. But yeah, Aphex Twin bringing his world into the Sphere would be something pretty special.

What are you working on now?

Tomorrow we’re shooting a catalog for a Swedish museum that’s exhibiting 17 of my sculptures this fall. I’m also flying to LA tomorrow to shoot one more performative piece for the Sphere for the shows coming up at the end of the month.

I’d say those are the most urgent things right now. Then there’s my ongoing project with The Weeknd—he’s releasing an album tomorrow. The world he’s about to introduce with this album is really special, I think. It’s an important chapter in his career and it’s a project that means a lot to me.

His creative director, Lamar, and I have a great connection. We’ve had a really close collaboration for the past couple of years, so working with them is always fantastic. Beyond that I’ve got some larger performances at Coachella coming up in April. That’s where the focus is for now.

Will you schedule any time off this year?

Not really. I try to, though—we always go to Greece, so we’ll probably be there three or four times this year. That’s where I find peace even though I combine it with my sculpture work. We’ll be back and forth trying to navigate the best times to go.

Luckily about 70% of my work is remote anyway. Even though my team and studio are in Stockholm, I can easily work from Athens. So we’ll have a pretty fluid schedule when it comes to time off.

Being in Greece and working on my art is where I feel most at peace, especially with my family around me.

alexanderwessely.com

 

A version of this article originally appeared in Sixtysix Issue 14.