Omniipresent was conceived during the global lockdowns of the COVID pandemic; a period defined by restriction, containment, and the sudden visibility of invisible systems governing everyday life. Like many artists, isolated from normal modes of working, Alastair Laas turned inward, developing an organic body of work that examined how human-made systems increasingly shape, regulate, and ultimately subvert nature’s inherent rhythms.

Produced under conditions of confinement, the works emerged from a tension between systematised control and cultivated intuition. The pandemic exposed infrastructures that are ordinarily unseen: bureaucratic protocols, algorithmic mediation, social regulation, and behavioural conditioning. Within this context, Laas began exploring how systems designed to stabilise society simultaneously impose artificial order onto organic processes by redirecting growth and human connection into frameworks.

Across painting and sculpture, Omniipresent investigates the quiet dominance of constructed environments over natural logic. Forms appear

restrained, interrupted, or redirected, suggesting forces acting upon them beyond the frame. Rather than depicting nature directly, the works stage encounters between organic gesture and imposed structure, moments where spontaneity meets containment.

“Omniipresent” speaks to both the pervasive reach of contemporary systems and the psychological atmosphere of lockdown itself, where authority, information, and anxiety became constant yet intangible presences. Control was everywhere yet nowhere visible – experienced through rules, interfaces, and mediated communication rather than physical force.

Omniipresent marks an early articulation of concerns that continue throughout Laas’ wider practice; the relationship between human fragility and constructed systems, and the ways contemporary life becomes organised through structures that appear neutral yet profoundly influence experience. The project asks a simple but persistent question: when systems become omnipresent, what remains truly organic?