The Ropac Paris-Pantin gallery is presenting a solo exhibition by painter David Salle. The Venice Paintings is a collection of paintings that was shown earlier this year at the Palazzo Cini gallery for the 61st Venice Biennale.
David Salle's point is that there is no point in fighting against technology – in this case, AI –but rather that we must cooperate with it in order to repurpose it. The artist, a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in art, trained his own AI to understand art and the content of his own work.
This series of paintings continues the New York artist's approach, in which he uses artificial intelligence as a tool to deconstruct and readjust pictorial logic. Salle fed his AI model with his early Tapestry Paintings, created between 1989 and 1991, works inspired by 18th century Russian Empire tapestries, which in turn were based on 16th and 17th century Italian oil paintings. From these, he creates new canvases in which time, medium, and place lose their boundaries.
While remaining faithful to the tradition of painting on canvas, Salle nevertheless quickly embraced new technologies: his recent collaboration with AI also resembles an act of resistance against the idea that machines could replace human creativity. David Salle puts it this way: One way to subvert a hegemonic technology is to appropriate it.
Courtiers, nudes, monarchs, and knights in armor mingle with fashion advertisements and still lifes in these masterful paintings. The real and the simulated collide, abolishing all temporal or geographical reference points in a setting that is often surprising, even subversive. Yet these distorted forms and headless busts do not shock: Salle dissolves the figurative framework, neutralizes the narrative, and opens up a realm where the recognizable becomes abstract. A masterclass in form and gesture, brought back into human hands.
To learn more: visit the exhibition on artificial intelligence at the Musée de l'Air in Le Bourget.
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