[ ceramics ]
Vectors on the Rocks
Helena Sarin
ARTXCODE is pleased to present an intimate collection of Helena Sarin's latest ceramics.
Each piece is entirely hand-crafted and adorned with designs inspired by her AI-generated artworks in a practice playfully dubbed potteryGAN. Combining traditional craftsmanship with strains of generative spontaneity and sharp wit, Vectors on the Rocks embodies the artist's technical brilliance, intelligent humor and thought-provoking approach to craft in the age of machine automation.
Since Sarin discovered Generative Adversarial Networks in 2017, she has played consistently with their potential to interact with the analog world. She quickly became a defining figure of the AI art movement by training neural networks from scratch on her physical artworks, ranging from watercolors and pastels to ink drawings and photographs. The outputs are colorful and energetic, bearing almost indiscernible traces of her physical creations within the algorithms' interpretations. By forging models that invoke the layered materiality of her hand-crafted datasets, Sarin not only embraces the weird and wonderful, but the beauty in human imperfection. Now, these generated images serve as inspiration for potteryGAN, further fusing physical materiality with machine-learning.
To create her ceramics, Sarin starts by selecting one of her 'GANified' images. She then works in Blender, a 3D modeling tool, to design the particularities of her physical piece, before 3D printing the shape to make a plaster mold for casting her tumblers. Once the form is created and fired in the kiln, Sarin begins painting with underglaze, creating intricate designs that stay true to the colors and patterns of the original GAN work. The pieces are fired again before she adds a transparent glaze for their final, glossy finish. From analog to digital and back again, Sarin skillfully integrates layers of creative nuance along the way. Her tumblers are neither human nor machine generated, they are both, expanding our understanding of what is possible when GANs are embraced as just one of many tools in a multifaceted approach to art-making.
PREVIEW AT LUME STUDIOS NYC
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2024
7PM - 10PM ET
ONLINE PUBLIC SALE OPENS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2024
FROM 12PM ET
About The Artist
Helena Sarin is a pioneering visual artist and software engineer merging contemporary generative art techniques with traditional art forms. With a career that began at Bell Labs, where she designed commercial communication systems, Helena's expertise in technology seamlessly transitioned into her artistic practice. Over the years, she has developed sophisticated computer vision software and worked as an independent consultant specializing in deep learning. Despite her strong foundation in tech, Helena's artistic endeavors initially focused on analog mediums such as watercolor, photography and pastel. Her dual passions for technology and art coalesced when she discovered Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Sarin's decision to train neural networks on her archive of artwork led her to produce what she referred to as “Folk AI” and quickly propelled her into the forefront of the early AI art movement.
Since then, Helena has become a prominent figure in the contemporary generative art world, exhibiting her work in renowned international venues such as Zurich, Dubai, Oxford, Shanghai, and Miami. Her innovative approach has been featured in esteemed publications like “Art In America” and prominent art books by Rizzoli and Taschen. Her fascination with tactility and humor through story-telling also led to the self-publication of a series of artist books like “The Book of GANesis” and “GANcommedia Erudita.” As of 2023, she has directed her focus on what she refers to as #potteryGAN, skillfully integrating her AI-generated designs into ceramics, creating functional art that bridges her technological expertise with tactile craftsmanship.