Concept

I don’t ask a machine for an image. I give it mine, drawn before it existed, and watch what it cannot digest.

1996
bodies, drawn by hand
5
exhibitions
4
awards and publications

01/ 04Study

The earlier matter

Fig. 1 · Pencil and acrylic on paper

I have been drawing bodies since 1996. Pencil, acrylic, paper. Studies made by hand, outside any feed, long before these tools. No model ever saw that grammar go by. It is my map: it exists before the machine, and stays foreign to it.

  • Pencil, acrylic
  • On paper
  • Since 1996
  • Outside any feed

02/ 04Study

The source image

Fig. 2 · Oil on panel, 160 cm high

I don’t describe what I want. I hand over the study itself, as a starting point. The model receives no instruction: it receives an image it does not recognise. This is the reverse of ordinary use. Instead of starting from its habits, it must start from mine.

  • One image: the study
  • No written instruction
  • The reverse of ordinary use

03/ 04Video

Corruption

Fig. 3 · Corruption, filmed

The model resists. Its slope pulls it back to what it has seen most often: safe proportion, flattering light, the standard body. It thins out my grammar, or abandons it. I go back, go over it, feed it in again. What interests me is not what it accepts, but what it cannot digest — what stays foreign in the image and never dissolves into the average.

  • The slope to the average
  • Go back, feed it again
  • What stays foreign

04/ 04Plate

The third state

What comes back is neither my study nor what the machine would have made alone. A third state, unstable, born of friction.

  • Four images, one plate
  • Detail at 1:1
  • Print · Third-state

The proof takes little: remove the map and that region is never visited; remove the model and that texture is never produced.

04/ 04Plate

The study

fig. 1

The machine alone

without the map

The print

Third-state

Detail

1:1 in the file

The threshold

Facing an image, something in us decides what gets in. What confirms passes through. What disturbs is translated into the familiar, and we believe we have understood. I meet that guard every time I work. You meet it while looking. An image that cost its author nothing asks nothing of you. This one asks for a step sideways, and only you decide to take it.

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