In a world drowning in disposable images, I see painting as a way of insisting on reflection and hope inside an economy built to extract our attention. Painting slows down the act of seeing; it demands presence in an era designed for distraction.
Walter Benjamin proposed that mechanical reproduction erodes an artwork’s aura. But in the age of generative AI, what happens when images are born from the sterile logic of algorithms and lack an aura in the first place? The plants in these paintings have never known dirt, never reached for the sun, never unfurled in the wind. They are algorithmic simulations without scent, sap, or soil. By translating them from pixels into oil on canvas, I attempt to reverse the logic of computation by giving physicality to the ephemeral, insisting on materiality and time in a culture ruled by speed and simulation. Can an image that was not born with an aura (according to Walter Benjamin, and I'm not sure I disagree) be given one through painting?
The golden wireframes of these greenhouses reference the digital architectures shaping our world: delicate, seductive, and engineered. Greenhouses are not merely spaces of cultivation, they are also sealed environments that regulate life on their own terms. Like the silent infrastructures that govern our digital existence, these structures are built for optimization and extraction, reducing organic life to data.
Beauty is not just a reflection of the algorithm’s seduction; to me, it is an agent of hope and a tool for understanding the complex systems that shape our world. As we enter an AI-driven future, we need more than just technological literacy, we need a nuanced cultural fluency in how these systems shape us. Just as past revolutions in industry and information reshaped society, AI and attention-based economies demand a new way of thinking and seeing the world. Art can be that bridge as an invitation to slow down and to build a the future on our own terms.
