Abstract:
Simon Ingram’s practice operates as a complex investigation of the praxis of painting. By building and programming machines to operate as intermediaries for the artist’s hand, Ingram brings into being a fascinating range of nuanced methodologies for exploring the limits of image-making.
In this latest series of works, Ingram uses as raw material image files created by a type of artificial intelligence known as a generative adversarial network, or GAN. These surreal, hypnagogic icons are then interpreted by a second layer into a series of brush movements drawn from a library of strokes used in the Cossard shorthand alphabet and fed to a painting machine to be executed. The resulting works are cryptic and evocative, dreamlike communiques from a hidden realm of self-generating thought.
