Meet Arian Lori-Amini — The Aerospace Engineer Behind HYPNOTIQ

There is a particular kind of artist whose work tells you everything you need to know about how they think before you ever meet them. Arian Lori-Amini is that artist. The founding voice behind HYPNOTIQ is, by day, a Technical Program Manager in Aerospace Engineering. By calling, he is a boundary-breaking sculptor and installation artist whose work has crossed three continents, earned a Best Project recognition at Art Basel Miami, and built collector relationships in cities from Manhattan to Quito. The result is a body of work that is bold, joyful, conceptually rich — and almost impossible to mistake for anyone else's.

Arian Lori-Amini — founder and creative director, HYPNOTIQ.

The Two Disciplines

Most working artists in this category followed a linear path — art school, gallery internships, residencies. Arian's path is more interesting. An Edmonds, Washington native and Edmonds-Woodway High School alumnus, he built one career inside aerospace engineering and another, in parallel, inside the studio. The discipline of aerospace shows up in HYPNOTIQ's work in ways that are easy to miss at first — the obsessive attention to material precision, the engineering of internal supports that make balloon letters look like they are floating, the integration of working electronics into sculptures that read first as art. The bold, joyful sensibility comes from somewhere else entirely: a refusal to take art-world solemnity too seriously, paired with an instinct that the most meaningful objects are the ones that make a room smile when a guest walks in.

Aerospace and pop art are an unusual pairing, but the cross-pollination is the point. The structural engineering inside a HYPNOTIQ piece is the part nobody sees and the part that makes the work possible. Balloon letters that appear to float defy gravity through hidden internal supports. Smart mannequins that play music house complete tablet computers inside hand-finished resin shells. Sound-reactive Venus wall sculptures hide fiber optics inside hand-applied mirror surfaces. The art object on the plinth is one half of the story; the engineering behind the surface is the other.

In the HYPNOTIQ studio.

The HYPNOTIQ Practice

Under the HYPNOTIQ brand, Arian works across a wider medium range than most contemporary sculptors. The studio's published catalog includes luxury pop art sculpture (the LUXE LOVE BAG signature series, the Companion Series, the Venus Series), immersive LED and fiber-optic installations, mixed-media wall works in dimensional plaster and high-gloss resin, smart-mannequin sculptures with integrated Samsung Wi-Fi touchscreens, and live performance art including glow-in-the-dark body painting on runways. Each medium pushes a different question. The sculptures ask what pop art looks like at one-of-one scale. The wall works ask what painting looks like when it pushes off the wall. The smart mannequins ask what a sculpture looks like when it can play music, change color, and react to its room. The body painting asks what happens when the canvas walks.

Art Basel Miami — Best Project Recognition

HYPNOTIQ has exhibited modern contemporary mixed-media sculpture and pop art works at Art Basel Miami — the most-watched contemporary art fair in the western hemisphere. Among that body of work, the Women Unite installation earned Best Project recognition. Showing at Basel matters because it places the work in the conversation alongside the artists collectors are already tracking. Earning a project award inside that context matters more, because it sets the work apart from the larger crowd of also-exhibiting studios. The Women Unite installation tackled the visual language of women's solidarity in 2024 — a piece engineered to be both photographable for social media and conceptually serious for the collector eye.

New York — Fashion Week & Manhattan

New York City has hosted multiple HYPNOTIQ exhibitions, including live art showcases, luxury sculpture installations, and signature glow-in-the-dark body painting performances across Manhattan. The studio has also been featured at New York Fashion Week with live art and fashion-integrated installations, including body painting performances staged on the runway. The intersection of art and fashion is where HYPNOTIQ tends to be most at home. The LUXE LOVE BAG series is the obvious product of that intersection, but it shows up across the catalog — the Smart Mannequin series uses the language of boutique-retail fixtures; the Companion Series sits inside the same designer-toy collector ecosystem that intersects fashion and luxury culture.

The Hamptons

Over twenty solo and collaborative exhibitions across the Hamptons art scene. The Hamptons matter because that is where serious collectors spend their summer Saturdays — walking gallery rows, talking to artists, building the kind of in-person relationships that translate into commissions and acquisitions in the following months. Repeat exhibition presence in that ecosystem is how a studio moves from emerging to established. HYPNOTIQ's Hamptons work has favored mixed-media wall pieces and Companion Series sculptures, which travel well from East Hampton galleries to Southampton private collections.

San Francisco & International

On the West Coast, HYPNOTIQ has shown through gallery representation and showcase exhibitions at ACE Modern Art in San Francisco. Internationally, the studio has been featured at a major art, fashion and music festival in Quito, Ecuador, with live performance and body painting events. Three continents of exhibition presence is unusual at this career stage, and it shapes the work — each city teaches the studio something different about what an audience responds to. San Francisco rewards minimal restraint. Quito rewards saturated color. Miami rewards spectacle. New York rewards conceptual hooks. HYPNOTIQ's catalog now contains pieces tuned to each of those audience reads.

Seattle & The Pacific Northwest

Seattle is the studio's home market and the place where the practice deepens. HYPNOTIQ has been a featured artist at the Cannonball Arts Museum grand opening, with continued participation through Bumbershoot programming. The studio took part in the Cotton Candy Show at Base Camp Studios in Belltown, with strong reviews from the Seattle Times. A roughly year-long exhibiting relationship with the A/NT Gallery (Coop Gallery) has produced both group and solo shows. Seattle-area installations include sculptures, wall art, murals, smart mannequins, and fashion-tech-infused HYPNOTIQ XPERIENCE pop-up installations. Seattle is where most of the catalog gets made and where most of the studio's experimental work first sees public light.

What's Next — The 2026 Focus

The 2026 focus is the LUXE LOVE BAG signature series, continued expansion of the Venus and Companion Series, a deeper push into smart-mannequin work for hospitality and boutique-retail clients, and a new commission program for collectors who want pieces tailored to specific rooms, color stories, or installation contexts. The studio is actively open to private commissions, brand collaborations, gallery representation conversations, and exhibition opportunities worldwide. Inquiries can begin at info@hypnotiqxperience.com, Instagram @HYPNOTIQstudio, or phone +1 (206) 499-1380. Collectors looking for the fastest path to acquisition can use the Private Acquisition Inquiry button on any HYPNOTIQ product page — every inquiry routes to Arian personally with a one-business-day response window.