You’ve probably seen it. Maybe you didn't know the name at the time, but you’ve seen that image of a massive, rusted robot slumped in a field while a girl and her small yellow toy drone walk past. It’s eerie. It feels like a memory of a future that somehow already happened. That’s the power of The Electric State art, a visual universe created by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag that managed to redefine how we look at science fiction in the 2010s and 2020s.
It isn't just "cool concept art." Honestly, it’s a mood. It’s a specific brand of "rural nostalgia meets high-tech decay" that people have started calling Stalenhagian, even if they can't spell his name right.
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The Weird Origins of a Dying 1997
Most sci-fi goes for the shiny chrome of Star Trek or the neon-soaked rain of Blade Runner. Stålenhag went the other way. He chose 1997. But not the 1997 we remember with Tamagotchis and Chumbawamba. He imagined an alternative 1997 where a mysterious neuro-tech company called Sentre dominated the world.
The Electric State art tells the story of Michelle, a runaway, and her robot Skip. They’re traveling across a fictionalized American West—think Nevada and California—that’s littered with the literal husks of a consumerist society that plugged itself into "Neurocasters" and just... forgot to wake up.
It’s bleak.
But it’s also beautiful in a way that’s hard to describe without looking at the brushwork. Stålenhag doesn’t use traditional digital painting techniques that look hyper-smooth. He uses a digital style that mimics gouache and oil painting, giving the "photographs" a tactile, hazy quality. You can almost smell the wet pavement and the ozone coming off the massive, derelict cooling towers.
Why This Specific Art Style Broke the Internet
It’s about the "uncanny valley" of the mundane.
When you look at a piece of The Electric State art, you aren't looking at a space battle. You’re looking at a cluttered basement. You're looking at a suburban backyard where a massive, tentacled drone is tangled in the power lines like a dead kite. This juxtaposition—putting the impossible next to the boringly familiar—is why it went viral on platforms like Tumblr and Reddit before the book was even published.
The narrative hidden in the pixels
Unlike a lot of concept artists who just want to show off a cool ship design, Stålenhag writes through his painting. Every image has a piece of trash in the foreground—a discarded soda can, a specific brand of cigarette—that grounds the sci-fi in reality. It makes the horror feel more personal.
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You see those giant helmets people are wearing in the paintings? Those are the VR rigs. They look like VR, but they have these thick, fleshy cables running into the ground. It’s a visual metaphor for addiction that hits a little too close to home in the age of TikTok and the Metaverse. People aren't being conquered by aliens; they're just choosing to disappear into a digital haze while their physical bodies rot in lawn chairs.
From Canvas to the Russo Brothers and Netflix
Success like this doesn't stay on the internet for long. After a massive Kickstarter campaign in 2017 that raised over $300,000, the narrative art book became a cult hit. It wasn't long before Hollywood came knocking.
The transition from The Electric State art to a massive Netflix film directed by the Russo Brothers (the guys behind Avengers: Endgame) is a huge leap. It’s actually a bit controversial among hardcore fans. Why? Because the art is so quiet. It’s still. It relies on the viewer's imagination to fill in the silence between the frames. A big-budget action movie is, by definition, loud.
The film stars Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt. Reports suggest the budget ballooned past $300 million. That is a staggering amount of money for a story that started as a series of digital paintings about a depressed girl in a station wagon.
Does the art translate to 24 frames per second?
That’s the big question. When you see the trailers or the leaked set photos, the "Sentre" robots look incredible. They’ve kept that rounded, retro-futurist aesthetic from the 90s. But some worry that the specific "Scandinavian melancholy" of the original Electric State art might get lost in the "Marvel-ization" of the story.
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Stålenhag’s work is famously light on dialogue. The book reads like a travelogue or a diary. To turn that into a blockbuster, you have to add jokes, chase scenes, and clear villains. It’s a trade-off. We get to see the world come to life, but we might lose the sense of loneliness that made the art so special in the first place.
How Simon Stålenhag Actually Creates These Pieces
If you're an artist, you've probably wondered about his process. He’s pretty transparent about it. He doesn't use AI—funny enough, considering the themes of his work.
He starts with actual photographs. He’ll go out into the Swedish countryside or the American desert and take photos of landscapes, old cars, and abandoned buildings. Then, he uses a Wacom tablet in Adobe Photoshop to "paint over" and integrate the sci-fi elements.
- Lighting is key: He matches the light of the sci-fi objects perfectly to the natural light of the photograph. If the sun is setting at a 40-degree angle, the shadow from the giant robot has to match that exactly.
- The "Rough" Finish: He avoids the "Airbrush" look. He uses textured brushes that leave visible strokes. This makes the art feel like it was painted by a human hand in the 20th century, not rendered by a computer in the 21st.
- Color Palettes: He loves desaturated teals, muddy oranges, and "safety" yellow. It’s the color of industrial equipment.
The Legacy of the "Sentre" Aesthetic
We are seeing the influence of The Electric State art everywhere now. Look at the game Tales from the Loop (which is also based on Stålenhag's earlier work) or even the aesthetic of shows like Stranger Things. There is a massive trend of "Analog Horror" and "Backrooms" content that owes a debt to this style.
It tapped into a specific anxiety. We’re scared of our tech, but we’re also bored by it.
The art reminds us that even if we build giant, world-changing machines, someone still has to mow the grass around them. Someone still has to fix the rust. Life continues to be messy and mundane, even in the middle of a technological apocalypse.
How to Experience The Electric State Properly
If you've only seen the images on Pinterest, you're missing out. To really get it, you need the physical book. There's something about the large-format printing that makes the scale of the machines feel heavy.
- Read the text: Don't just skip to the pictures. The prose is sparse but haunting. It explains the "Drone War" and the "Unified Neural Network" in ways that make the paintings feel much darker.
- Listen to the soundtrack: Stålenhag is also a musician. He composed an electronic ambient soundtrack specifically for the book. Listening to those low, pulsing synths while looking at a painting of a giant, abandoned "Warship" in a suburban neighborhood is a total vibe.
- Check out the RPG: Free League Publishing released a tabletop RPG. It’s great if you want to tell your own stories in that world, focusing on the decay of society and the "Sentre" headsets.
Basically, the Electric State art isn't just a collection of cool pictures. It's a warning. It’s a look at what happens when we prioritize the virtual over the physical, wrapped in the nostalgic comfort of a 1990s road trip. Whether the Netflix movie hits or misses, the original paintings will remain some of the most influential pieces of science fiction art created this century.
Actionable Next Steps for Fans and Artists
If you want to dive deeper into this world or apply its lessons to your own creative work, here is how to move forward:
- Study the "Greeble": Look at the robots in the art. Notice how they aren't "sleek." They have wires, bolts, and vents. If you’re a designer, practice adding "functional" mess to your builds to make them feel lived-in.
- Explore the "Loop" Series: If you finish The Electric State, go back to Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood. They offer a more Swedish perspective on the same "alternate history" vibe.
- Photograph Your Neighborhood: Take a photo of the most boring street corner near your house. Now, imagine one "impossible" thing there. A crashed UFO? A giant mechanical leg? This is the core of the Stålenhag method. Use a photo editing app to match the lighting and see how it changes the "story" of your neighborhood.
- Limit Your Palette: One reason the art is so cohesive is the restricted color use. Pick three main colors for your next project and stick to them. It forces you to focus on composition and lighting rather than flashy effects.
The world of Sentre and the Neurocasters is a grim one, but it’s a masterclass in world-building. It shows that you don't need a thousand pages of lore if you have a single, perfect image that tells the whole story.