William Mapan

Biography

William Mapan, born in 1988, is a French artist and creative coder based in Paris. With over a decade of experience in software development, Mapan transitioned into digital art after being introduced to NFTs by fellow generative artist Matt DesLauriers. His practice begins from a blank slate, using a methodical, code-driven process to generate compositions that explore texture, form, color, and space, often translating digital output into physical paintings and live plotted drawings. Mapan gained widespread recognition for his projects Dragons, released on fxhash, and Anticyclones, released on Art Blocks, both of which established him as an artist able to bridge the fxhash and Art Blocks communities and cultivate a chain-agnostic collector base. His hybrid approach, blending code, paint, and machine-driven mark-making, has been described as demonstrating the transcendental nature of algorithmic art. Mapan's work has been exhibited internationally at institutions and auction houses including LACMA, the Toledo Museum of Art, Unit London, Sotheby's, and Art Basel. In addition to his studio practice, Mapan teaches at Gobelins, l'École de l'image in Paris, sharing his knowledge of code and algorithmic design with the next generation of digital artists. His ongoing work continues to investigate the relationship between painting, coding, and machines, treating each medium as a lens through which to examine the same underlying questions of structure and randomness. Mapan is represented in prominent collections and continues to release new long-form generative projects that merge his backgrounds in computer science and visual art.