Memorias de Timothy Clarke
Between Nonsense and Masterpiece
by Saša BrogojevIt has been argued that Rembrandt was able to capture the essence of his sitters. Going beyond their physical appearance, he could portray human emotions better than any artist before him. But what if a similar approach were applied to try and paint the essence of computer systems? Is it possible to convey the logic behind their randomly generated decisions and actions—the decisions at the core of AI algorithms, through which sophisticated visual compositing apparatus speculates with reality? This way of thinking prompted Manuel Aja Espil to develop a procedure that resulted in Memories of Timothy Clarke.
Memories of Timothy Clarke features six new paintings in which Aja Espil mixes traditional painting and the visual language of cartoons to explore the uncharted territories in which digital technology overlaps art. After years of building ubiquitous painterly scenes featuring made-up characters influenced by popular culture, the Argentinian artist decided to include AI as an essential part of the process. The original idea was to mix the admiration for the techniques used by the Old Masters with curiosity about the AI-generated digital pictures and the mechanisms of their production. But, however pop-like that concept was doomed to be, the archaic techniques transformed these offbeat images into timeless painterly artifacts. Sitting between nonsense and masterpiece, these paintings propose a novel fusion of disparate worlds.
The project began by prompting AI to generate scenes featuring Looney Tunes-like characters as if painted by Rembrandt. While initially looking for a limitation to art-making’s endless freedom, the original concept quickly lost its appeal. Instead, the focus shifted to the intriguing process behind producing these images. Aja Espil became enthralled by how it distilled the essence of provided reference visuals and fabricated new ones that met the criteria using AI’s automation, free from senses, anxieties, or fears. Essentially, its tools of thought that examine, combine, and develop variations provided a model for dissecting their construction while exploring the painting technique.
The decision to reference Rembrandt's timeless aesthetics and concepts might have been random at first, but the further the project developed, the more it made sense to nod at the work of a Dutch Golden Age master. He often broke away from conventions and scaled everything down to the essentials, but the AI algorithm’s scaling exceeded what humans would even consider. AI seems to have assumed that Rembrandt was a magician of painted light and shadow, a story builder who invented his scenes and relied on the brain’s ability to imagine the aspects of the image that complete the picture. Breaking these notions into fractions of data and constructing new patterns, the AI provided options for gloomy, melancholic vistas of the cartoon personas existing in another time and place. The cast of imaginary protagonists also strangely fits the Dutch master’s infamous depiction of unseeing eyes with perfectly round, dark, dilated pupils. However, despite keeping “the windows to the soul” somewhat shut, Rembrandt could still somehow capture his subjects' essence and emotional depth. Cartoon characters also remove the work from depicting corporeality, creating a glitch-like situation in which the fantastical, impossible views are transformed into believable scenes. Emphasizing light and shadow as essential elements for defining space, the protagonists dominate the image while remaining obscured and mysterious. Positioned against an unusual light source, they are brought forward, allowing the darkened surroundings to convey depth and perspective (Conspiraciones, 2023). Inconspicuously enveloping the entire setting with dramatic light, the paintings successfully depict the subject matter and set the emotional context. The heightened obscurity and dream-like atmosphere necessitate the ability to paint inside shadowy spaces where the medium seemed to go out of hand. In such sections, the soil-like appearance of the dried oily sludge reveals the painting’s organic nature and warrants its connection with alchemy (Otoño, 2023). Frailty balancing between a wet pigment and dusty smirch, the artist’s hand navigates this mass into constructing an image while honoring the fundamental value of painting - to imagine and create from its materiality.
Somewhat similarly, the most synthetic, abstract parts of AI-generated images, digital stains of sorts, can be seen as the machine's personal imprint, improvisation in the endless sea of information. Perhaps similar to “the most human painter” who could famously capture the sitter’s soul, Aja Espil sought to extract the machine’s thought process onto the canvas. The process of achieving this conditioned a paradox where the required procedure was evident, but the objective remained unclear and, as such, became the fuel for the process. Painting AI’s algorithm felt like making a painting from the inside out by vaguely discerning its deduction and generation patterns and logic. “Most of the time I worked on these, I did not know what I was painting. It often felt like groping around in the dark room looking for the light switch,” the Madrid-based artist explained the loose approach to 're-creating' reference images. Thus, while originating from the virtual world and using anthropomorphism to embellish technology, this series is intended for viewing with the naked eye, allowing dry oil's parched, crusty surfaces to reevaluate their eccentric appearance (Encuentros en Madrid, 2023). Ensuring they convey the tone of decisions or logic circuits that constructed the reference images, Aja Espil’s innovative and spontaneously developed concept ultimately revolved around attempting to “paint how the machine thinks.”
Saša Bogojev
Memories of Timothy Clarke features six new paintings in which Aja Espil mixes traditional painting and the visual language of cartoons to explore the uncharted territories in which digital technology overlaps art. After years of building ubiquitous painterly scenes featuring made-up characters influenced by popular culture, the Argentinian artist decided to include AI as an essential part of the process. The original idea was to mix the admiration for the techniques used by the Old Masters with curiosity about the AI-generated digital pictures and the mechanisms of their production. But, however pop-like that concept was doomed to be, the archaic techniques transformed these offbeat images into timeless painterly artifacts. Sitting between nonsense and masterpiece, these paintings propose a novel fusion of disparate worlds.
The project began by prompting AI to generate scenes featuring Looney Tunes-like characters as if painted by Rembrandt. While initially looking for a limitation to art-making’s endless freedom, the original concept quickly lost its appeal. Instead, the focus shifted to the intriguing process behind producing these images. Aja Espil became enthralled by how it distilled the essence of provided reference visuals and fabricated new ones that met the criteria using AI’s automation, free from senses, anxieties, or fears. Essentially, its tools of thought that examine, combine, and develop variations provided a model for dissecting their construction while exploring the painting technique.
The decision to reference Rembrandt's timeless aesthetics and concepts might have been random at first, but the further the project developed, the more it made sense to nod at the work of a Dutch Golden Age master. He often broke away from conventions and scaled everything down to the essentials, but the AI algorithm’s scaling exceeded what humans would even consider. AI seems to have assumed that Rembrandt was a magician of painted light and shadow, a story builder who invented his scenes and relied on the brain’s ability to imagine the aspects of the image that complete the picture. Breaking these notions into fractions of data and constructing new patterns, the AI provided options for gloomy, melancholic vistas of the cartoon personas existing in another time and place. The cast of imaginary protagonists also strangely fits the Dutch master’s infamous depiction of unseeing eyes with perfectly round, dark, dilated pupils. However, despite keeping “the windows to the soul” somewhat shut, Rembrandt could still somehow capture his subjects' essence and emotional depth. Cartoon characters also remove the work from depicting corporeality, creating a glitch-like situation in which the fantastical, impossible views are transformed into believable scenes. Emphasizing light and shadow as essential elements for defining space, the protagonists dominate the image while remaining obscured and mysterious. Positioned against an unusual light source, they are brought forward, allowing the darkened surroundings to convey depth and perspective (Conspiraciones, 2023). Inconspicuously enveloping the entire setting with dramatic light, the paintings successfully depict the subject matter and set the emotional context. The heightened obscurity and dream-like atmosphere necessitate the ability to paint inside shadowy spaces where the medium seemed to go out of hand. In such sections, the soil-like appearance of the dried oily sludge reveals the painting’s organic nature and warrants its connection with alchemy (Otoño, 2023). Frailty balancing between a wet pigment and dusty smirch, the artist’s hand navigates this mass into constructing an image while honoring the fundamental value of painting - to imagine and create from its materiality.
Somewhat similarly, the most synthetic, abstract parts of AI-generated images, digital stains of sorts, can be seen as the machine's personal imprint, improvisation in the endless sea of information. Perhaps similar to “the most human painter” who could famously capture the sitter’s soul, Aja Espil sought to extract the machine’s thought process onto the canvas. The process of achieving this conditioned a paradox where the required procedure was evident, but the objective remained unclear and, as such, became the fuel for the process. Painting AI’s algorithm felt like making a painting from the inside out by vaguely discerning its deduction and generation patterns and logic. “Most of the time I worked on these, I did not know what I was painting. It often felt like groping around in the dark room looking for the light switch,” the Madrid-based artist explained the loose approach to 're-creating' reference images. Thus, while originating from the virtual world and using anthropomorphism to embellish technology, this series is intended for viewing with the naked eye, allowing dry oil's parched, crusty surfaces to reevaluate their eccentric appearance (Encuentros en Madrid, 2023). Ensuring they convey the tone of decisions or logic circuits that constructed the reference images, Aja Espil’s innovative and spontaneously developed concept ultimately revolved around attempting to “paint how the machine thinks.”
Saša Bogojev