The whispering kaleidoscopes of Maria Mavropoulou - MAST Foundation, Bologna

Today I have learnt something, it felt like a breakthrough. Without daring to wade into the AI-generated art controversy, today I found myself welcoming the contribution that this technology can make to both the artistic process and its output. Today I did not see interference or appropriation, nor did I see creativity being stifled or human talent being replaced. Today I walked away thinking AI is an opportunity rather than a threat.

The work of Maria Mavropoulou (Athens, 1989), one of this year's MAST Photography Grant on Industry and Work finalists, In Their own image, in the image of God, They created Them, makes use of text-to-image conversion software to give life to a mesmerising multiplicity of images, which the artist calls Technototems. Mavropoulou told the algorithm the subjects she wanted to work on (tools, machines, pipes, valves, etc.) and the tool returned a set of images that she then modified, rendering them symmetrical and specular, like stained glass kaleidoscopes in a cathedral. The result is an extraordinary wedding of the uber technological with the spiritual, greatly enhanced by a sound installation of a female voice that gently whispers some of the code used to generate the images.

The MAST Foundation's Photo Gallery sets out to showcase industrial photography, which in my mind is hard to do as often you're not working with the visually appealing in the traditional sense. This show is impeccably curated, no one is left wondering what the heck they are looking at and everyone leaves inspired and having learnt something.

Bravo Urs Stahel and everyone involved.

© Maria Mavropoulou

One year of war in Ukraine

It's coming up to the 1st anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2021. The media have reported that Russia is planning to send tens of thousands of young troops to Eastern Ukraine as they launch yet another major offensive.

The idea that Ukraine should trade land for peace is both ignorant and offensive. Any territorial compromises would weaken the invaded and embolden the invaders. There is no possible peace scenario in which Ukrainians can share their country with those who have tortured and murdered civilians weaponising rape and ditching their bodies into mass graves, bombed hospitals and kidnapped and deported children to Russia to be re-educated and adopted. This is a colonial war. To accept and formalise Russian occupation would lead to the eradication of Ukrainian culture and to the realization of Putin's imperialist vision. And that is the opposite of peace.

#ukraine #russianinvasion #war #peace #imperialism #blog #beyondthecanvasblog

Dorobok

Ukrainian Tragedy #2, 2022

Alice Neel: Un regard engagé at Centre Pompidou, Paris

"I do not pose my sitters. Before painting, when I talk to the person, they unconsciously assume their most characteristic pose, which in a way involves all their character and social standing – what the world has done to them and their retaliation." - Alice Neel (1900-1984)

Neel's view that the subjects of her portraits were retaliating against the world's nastiness is extraordinary. Then again, there is very little about her that wasn't. A lifelong communist since the McCarthyism days, a wildly free-spirited woman who swapped New York's residential Greenwich Village for Spanish Harlem, Neel spent her life painting unapologetic and empathic portraits of American society. She painted both the rich and the underprivileged, her friends and her neighbours, with a definite penchant for the marginalised, the mad and the destitute. What also very much set Neel apart from the rest, is her unflinching commitment to realist figuration at a time when minimalism and abstract expressionism were all but dominating the art scene.

It's easy to be fascinated by Neel's portraits for their intensity and ability to capture the psychology of the sitter. I was mostly struck by how she painted women, without any idealisation or sentimentality. Poor mothers, an unusually large number of heavily pregnant women, nursing women, victims of domestic violence. Her female nudes couldn't be farther from traditional canons. Their bodies are ordinary, relatable, they are no objects of desire depicted to please. Ah the female gaze.

#aliceneel #figurativeart #femaleartist #americanartist #portraits #artblog #beyondthecanvasblog