Pilar Zeta

Early life

Pilar Zeta was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Drawing and painting since the age of six, early on she saw art as a medium of expression. Her father would take her to art museums, where she recollects that "I was so overwhelmed with the colors and techniques that as soon as I was home I was trying to recreate what I saw." When she was young her mother also exposed her to Indigo children philosophies, and Zeta became interested in cosmology, metaphysics, and later on meditation.

Her brother also introduced her to 1960s rock bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and the Alan Parsons Project, with Zeta paying mind to the bands' psychedelic album covers. In her early teens she became a user of software such as Corel Draw and Photoshop, explaining that "once I started going to school, my favourite subject was computers... And besides that I’ve been always an avid lover of books, especially the covers, I would stare at them for hours. I always knew I was going to be a graphic designer."

2000s: Early years

Leaving Argentina at the age of nineteen, Zeta moved to the United States as a foreign exchange student. Within a year she was hired as a graphic designer, despite having no formal secondary training. In Miami she soon began designing artwork for musicians and promoters in the local EDM scene. In 2009 she moved from Miami to Berlin, exhibiting her art in Berlin, London, and Moscow. Her work has since been reviewed in publications such as the German Groove Magazine.

2010-13: Album covers and RAD

In 2010 she founded the creative agency RAD, through which she worked for clients such as Island Records, Big Beat Records, Crosstown Rebels, Hotflush, and Get Physical. In 2011 she became a part of the art collective called OUTLAND, along with Daniela Huerta, Leandro Quintero, Camille Blake, Sandrine Nicoletta and Clemence de la Tourdupin. The group had a number of exhibitions, including a show at the Art Show & Gathering in Berlin that year in June, in venues such as the L’atelier Kunst in Berlin. They also held a November 2011 exhibition in Moscow, titled Shift, and a second show titled Shift II held in Berlin in December. The group separated shortly after.

As of 2012 she continued to work with RAD, and had also designed album covers for independent labels such as Visionquest, Mobilee and Supernature, all associated with house music. Todd Burns of Resident Advisor wrote in October 2012 that "Zeta has created some of the most distinctive electronic music design of the past few years." As of November 2013 she had designed album covers for artists such as Jimmy Edgar, Tiga, Roosevelt, and Disclosure, and had also exhibited "mixed media installations" at a number of international galleries. Among those were the Berghain nightclub in Germany, where she contributed art in 2013. RAD closed in the spring of 2014, after she left Berlin for Los Angeles.

2013-14: Holographic Universe

After a lifetime of working on her own clothes, Zeta began designing her own fashion lines in November 2013. In August 2014, debuted her collaborative fashion line Holographic Universe. According to Zeta's website, "the fashion and lifestyle brand was influenced by their fascination with the cosmos, neo-classical sculpture, and time travel." Zeta created the artwork while both designing the fashion pieces. By late summer of 2014 the line had been exhibited in Paris, New York though Zeta left the company around that time.

2013-14: Ultramajic

Zeta met and befriended DJ and producer Jimmy Edgar around 2011, when both were living in Berlin. Upon meeting Edgar, Zeta explained that "We have similar influences and backgrounds, so we just started working on different projects together: covers, tarot cards, collages, rituals etc." While traveling in Machu Picchu in 2013, she and Edgar founded the label Ultramajic. DJ Broadcast dubbed her the "primary design outlet" for the label, still based in Berlin as of September 2013. The company works on multi-media projects in music, art, photography, video, and installations. Among other projects for Ultramajic, together she and Edgar launched the release series Metaphysix, with artists given themes and ideas such as "mentalism" to interpret artistically. Her colalboration with Edgar titled "Danny Daze - Silicon," released on Ultramajic, was featured in the magazine Viewpoint Surface in 2014. She continues to design much of the label's and Edgar's cover art.

2015: Collaboration with Coldplay

In 2015, Zeta did art direction for Coldplay's album A Head Full of Dreams (2015). Before designing the album art she collaborated with them to make an art studio in London, for it she made a 3 meters handmade collage including the childhood images of the artist. A kaleidoscope version of this collage was used as the cover art of the album including a colorful version of the flower of life designed by her. A Head Full of Dreams.

Artistic style and influences

According to Resident Advisor in 2012, Zeta's often surrealist artwork is characterized by "big, striking shapes, punctuated with a dash of the unexpected," and often incorporates themes related to Ancient Egypt and the metaphysical. Zeta stated in 2013 that her style could be described as "retro-futuristic-mystical-art," clarifying that "I’ve always been fascinated and highly influenced by UFOs and paranormal activity. Later in my teenage years, I became interested in geometry, metaphysics, psychedelia, magick, Egypt, lasers and Star Wars. I think my artwork reflects these random influences and somehow they blend well together."

She has referenced album cover artist Storm Thorgerson as a significant influence on her style, stating that "he was the pioneer on merging the surreal art into music." She employs multiple mediums, sometimes drawing and scanning her own work or using photographs from flea markets and old books for collages. In late 2014 she stated that she had lately been "creating all my own resources, from shapes to textures. I draw them in Illustrator or create them in Cinema 4D and then migrate them to Photoshop."

Personal life

Based primarily in Berlin in September 2013, as of 2014 she was also based in Los Angeles.