British artist Jonathan Yeo remains best known for his portrait of the newly crowned King Charles III. But, the self-taught artist has also experimented with technology for over a decade. Last October, this line of enquiry culminated with a three-day show of Yeo’s paintings at the Centre Pompidou in partnership with Snap, which helped animate his portraits using augmented reality (A.R.). The exhibition, “Spectacular: The Art of Jonathan Yeo in Augmented Reality,” makes its U.S. debut this Sunday at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.

Yeo has painted famous people for three decades. On a video call, he described portraiture as his “day job.” Its static nature has historically frustrated him. “I tend to spend half my time doing the portraits, and half the year experimenting,” Yeo said. Early forays included collages and themed series.

Key art for “Spectacular” featuring Jonathan Yeo. Photo courtesy of Snapchat.

“In recent years, that side of it’s been slightly replaced by playing with technologies,” he said. In 2017, he produced his first bronze sculpture, a self portrait cast from a model made with Google’s new 3D virtual reality painting application, Tilt Brush. In 2021, he helped judge the Venice International Film Festival‘s Venice VR Expanded competition.

Eventually, Yeo met Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, whose known penchant for art has led Snap Inc. to collaborate with legendary artists like Mark Bradford and Jeff Koons. Yeo in particular linked up with Snap’s French A.R. unit. In 2022, they released a new Snapchat filter inspired by his portraiture, in partnership with London’s National Portrait Gallery.

“I think the idea of the selfie, Snapchat, Jonathan being a portrait artist—it all came together into this nice, neat little package,” Benjamin Wymer, Snap’s Senior Director of Global Brand Experience, said on another video call.

Evan Spiegel presenting Spectacles. Photo: Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images.

Yeo’s SXSW showcase will present the same seven reproductions of his paintings that featured in its debut edition—accompanied by an enhanced A.R. experience. He and Snap’s A.R. team have adjusted that element based on observations from the exhibition’s last engagement. “We hadn’t really tested it on anyone outside the development team,” Yeo said. “People spent much longer in it than we expected.” There are numerous ways, after all, to interact with each artwork once guests don Snap’s A.R. glasses, Spectacles, made for developers only. Their consumer counterpart, Specs, is slated to hit the market this year.

Snapchat’s iconic dog filter defined an entire milieu. The technology empowering “Spectacular” works similarly. Here, however, Snap has trained models on Yeo’s paintings, so Spectacles recognizes them as viewers approach. Each artwork has an audio track. This time around they’re “a bit more multi-layered and playful,” Yeo said. He’s learned to trust his audience. The artworks also react visually to certain actions. Although Yeo resisted spoiling the show’s surprises, he did intimate that it begins with a self-portrait. In the work’s audio track, he said, “I talk a bit about portraiture and about what technology might do.”

Cara Delevingne with her portrait at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerod, Denmark, 2016. Photo: Schiller Graphics / Getty Images.

Next, guests will savor the sight of Cara Delevigne, who got Yeo on Snapchat around 2013. With each successive artwork, “more dramatic things happen to the pictures—things come out of the pictures, they become three dimensional,” Yeo said. The butterfly on that infamous red portrait flies off King Charles. If guests reach out their hand, the charming little creature might land on it.

“The twist is that at some point you become the picture, and that’s the point where people really then get very involved,” Yeo said. Here, he’s highlighting the seductive, unsettling ways that technology serves and manipulates society, from social media to deep fakes. (Rest assured, though, he and Snap have taken the time and expense to ensure participants’ faces aren’t stored.)

King Charles’s first official portrait since the coronation by Jonathan Yeo. Photo: Stringer / Anadolu via Getty Images.

Although the art world can be notoriously reticent to adopt new technologies, the technology firm is bullish on A.R. “Artists adapt to new technology,” Wymer told me. “Going from a cave painting to an oil painting was really just an adaptation of the tools available.” But A.R. isn’t just empowering new types of art—it’s also creating a paradigm where painters like Yeo can update their works with each successive exhibition. He imagines a world, too, where museums, for instance, can upgrade wall texts and audio guides into personalized adventures that are entertaining or educational, very involved or more minimal.

“It’s quite an interesting idea that it could all be visual,” Yeo said, adding “I prefer the less-visible technology.” That’s part of why he’s passionate about A.R.—it’s interactive, and also integrated into real life, unlike virtual reality. “You can just have a little something going on, and it can be pretty subtle,” he noted, “or you can have something which takes over everything.” From start to finish, his show illustrates a bit of this range.

“Spectacular: The Art of Jonathan Yeo in Augmented Reality” will be on view at 101 Red River Street, Austin, Texas, March 15–17, 2026