Talented Israeli artist Efrat Yaron opens her new exhibition “Recursivity” on August 3 in Tel Aviv. For the first time, she uses artificial intelligence to give a unique dimension to her colorful art, which blends the real with the abstract. “The issues I refer to are mainly linked to the need for meaning... I try to introduce logic into a reality that is hard to understand.” The exhibition presents 2D and 3D canvases, as well as a video installation, and takes us on a fascinating journey that reflects the artist's thinking.
Efrat Yaron pushes the boundaries and creates a tension between real and digital reality, questioning the relationship between the source and its reproduction. The works are imbued with the duality between truth and lies, reality and fiction, themes she has been interested in for years.
“The sea is a symbol I often use. In fact, it's almost always my starting point, because for me it represents a fundamental value, nature in its purest state, in all its complexity. I named my exhibition 'Recursivity', because in mathematics it echoes the process of an action that repeats and reflects itself to infinity”, says Efrat.
The artist is relentless in her search for inner truth, as she plunges into the sea of pictures provided by the media.
“We're currently in a very confusing period, inundated with information, with fake news and media fallout, while during tv ads we're being sold counterfeit products. All this context led me to use AI, and I entrusted this tool with my paintings, which deal with the meaning of existence”, explains Efrat.
In her works, reality has been replaced by a blurred, illusory reality, made up of a mosaic of tangled images, woven from fictions or fantasies, and a reality far from the one we live in. An interesting perspective that confuses the viewer, who struggles to distinguish the real from the fake.
An original process
The artist placed her paintings in an AI program and asked her to describe them in words, then in pictures. She then made modifications by hand before using the software again. By repeating the process several times, Efrat created an artificial, invented vision, reflecting modern human's view of the world.
“It's a kind of visual experiment, I wanted to see what AI could bring to my works and in what way the digital tool would interfere with the original creation to give unprecedented results. It's not an exhibition built entirely from AI, because the final result is up to me. It's a disturbing process, because the machine produces dozens of images created from my paintings, but in reality, they're not mine. It's a very interesting tool, which acts as an intermediary and allows you to obtain quite surprising versions, but it can't replace the work of an artist,” says Efrat. “There's a kind of dissonance between the software's process and manual artistic work.”
To the thousands of images produced by the computer, Efrat attached a label similar to those on consumer objects, then created a collage that expresses artificiality against authenticity.
Efrat was also inspired by artificial pools. In her painting, the pools are reflected through the architectural columns with the sky and sea. When she isolated the digital image, puddles emerged that she decided to put physically into space.
“The world is changing and we shouldn't be afraid of technology; I think we should use it wisely to bring inspiration. I try to use several techniques because it seems to me that this is the future of art”, concluded Efrat.
The opening will take place on August 3 at 11 a.m. at Periscope Gallery, 176 Ben Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv. The exhibition, curated by Sari Paran, will run throughout August.
Caroline Haïat
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