Amir Fattal. Post-artificial Paintings

About

On display at Telegraphenamt are new oil paintings from the series STUDIO VISITS, which interpret classical art world scenes for the 21st century. Fattal begins each of his works with a series of keywords and prompts that coax a fictional portrait out of the depths of the "collective unconscious" of artificial intelligence. The subjects are various protagonists of an idealized "art world" – from artists with models in their studios to collectors in their homes to art dealers in their offices. They all pose with one of their most prized possessions: an "artwork within an artwork". This second artwork is also the product of AI, generated according to the specific aesthetics and values of each protagonist depicted.

The figures in Fattal's paintings embody the ideals of the present, placeholders for wealth, style, elegance, sophistication, and artistic sensibility. Displaying an impeccable taste for designer garments and existing among their carefully arranged furniture and displaying expressions of unfettered self-confidence, Fattal’s protagonists are almost too perfect to be true. They are both a product and a commentary on our society, a mirror reflecting the various ways our collective data is harnessed to dream up new realities.

In Fattal’s paintings, the typical Californian, mid-century bungalows with their glass fronts and turquoise pools and leather couches, can be found, evoking parallels to a number of predecessors in this genre: David Hockney’s LA domiciles, the everyday nature of Eric Fischl’s sitters, and the staging of the individual in Cindy Sherman's self-portraits. Fattal's works introduce the AI prompt as a compelling new technique for art production, building an inherent curiosity as to the linguistic locutions that were given to generate the resulting images. The figures are at once both ambitious and aspirational, with the subtly coded "je ne sais quois" of a 21st century aristocracy – understated and discreet, confident, and breathtakingly determined in their aesthetic choices and appearance.

In this series, Fattal has blurred the lines between reality and imagination, creating characters that are composites of cultural ideals. They are the embodiment of an art world that doesn't exist just within the confines of galleries and studios but extends into the spaces we inhabit and the lives we aspire to lead. This series does not merely capture the zeitgeist; it is a zeitgeist in itself, a realm where the lines between the real and the artificially conceived are not just blurred but interwoven.