For Alex Proba, unfamiliar mediums and unexpected collaborations paved the way for a portfolio without boundaries.
For most of Alex Proba’s upbringing, art was almost non-existent. Before settling in Germany, Proba’s parents, both doctors, fled the communist regime in Poland to offer their children a chance at a better life. The result is a household that is, as Proba says, “based on science and not creative.” Some of her happiest moments were with her grandmother, a former florist who helped raise Proba and her siblings and spent many days in the garden.
Alex ProbaParker Fitzgerald of Ransom LTD
When Proba was 15, everything changed. She was sent to Ohio for an exchange year, and found herself in an alternate reality: living with a family with a strong interest in art and design, including a host mother who was a former designer for DKNY. With their encouragement, Proba began his own art practice, and developed a particular interest in painting. “That was the first time in my life where I was like, ‘I can do that,'” Proba said. “When I got home, I didn’t stop.”
The next few years were a burst of artistic exploration for Proba, who studied architecture and graphic design in Germany, worked briefly at an architecture firm in New York, then returned to Europe to earn a degree in furniture design. at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. . Back then, another part of the industry caught Proba’s eye: the fast-paced world of branding, which seemed to be the perfect fit for the creative nature of the multidisciplinary artist. He returned to New York and spent several years on in-house design teams at startups General Assembly and Kickstarter, then worked with big-name clients like Target and Oscar Health as design director for the agency branding Mother. In 2013, Proba, whose legal status in the US depended on work visas provided by her employers, started a side hustle to get her creative juices flowing again. At the time, Instagram was relatively new; Proba decided to join the platform as a way to keep herself accountable to a small following of family and friends as she challenged herself to create a new digital poster every day for a year. “I said to myself, every day when I go home, I can do it somehow,” she says.
Word travels fast on the internet, but pictures travel even faster. On its 100th day, Proba’s project has garnered an explosion of press coverage, and the audience that admires his work—surreal, abstract images in saturated color, all displayed in digital collages—is climb to hundreds, then thousands. As he began taking commissions and collaborating with other artists and brands, Studio Proba grew into a formidable presence. During the same year, Proba also launched his own collection of items called Proba Home: a variety of furniture, wallpapers, rugs and soft products depicting reconceptualized versions of the colors and motifs featured in the original poster assortment.
A mural serves as the backdrop of Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Store on Rodeo Drive in Los AngelesCourtesy of Louis Vuitton
In 2018, Proba was able to quit his day job as an art director at Nike to pursue the venture full-time. Since then, his oeuvre has expanded in unexpected directions, such as last year’s debut of Proba Paws, a line of pet accessories made in the designer’s signature style. Beyond that, his work spans art, murals, sculpture, furniture, space and branding, including numerous collaborations—from a colorful custom refrigerator for Samsung Electronics to a sneaker collection with Duliss Shoes to at the Rodeo Drive storefront display for Louis Vuitton, where he designed a custom trunk to celebrate the brand’s 200th anniversary. Last year also saw the artist collaborate on a line of unisex pajamas for Nufferton, tiles for Concrete Collaborative and a desk set for Areaware.
Despite working in different mediums, Proba’s creative process always begins by hand, with initial ideas created as collages, paintings or sketches. When gathering inspiration, he describes himself as “anti-swipe,” turning away from social media as a source. “It makes your work less powerful because there’s no way it can’t influence you,” Proba said. Instead, she draws more from nature and her own memories—including places like the gardens her grandmother tended as a child, which became her signature floral patterns, colorful palette and curved lines.
Proba designed a refrigerator for Samsung with a bold and abstract designCourtesy of Samsung
Now, Proba’s sights are set on tackling more new terrain, including new collaborations and seemingly off-the-wall mediums—literally. One of his biggest recent achievements is the design of custom commissioned swimming pool tiles, which together form a mosaic work. “That was on my list for a long time as a neglected canvas,” Proba said. “Picasso and Hockney did something back in the day, but after that there wasn’t much focus on it.”
This year, he already has three more pools in his project pipeline, including an upcoming collection of high-end furniture for an Italian company, murals and potentially large-scale sculptural installations. The constant challenge of new mediums keeps him on his toes, which is how he likes it. “I like to do the unexpected,” Proba says of his upcoming projects. “Those are really my wins—the harder, the better.”
Homepage image: Proba designed an evocative pool mural in Palm Springs | Madeline Tolle
