Courtesy TAI Modern

History Painting: Jason Salavon
November 29 – December 28, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, Nov 29, 5-7pm
Artist Walkthrough: Saturday, Nov 30, 2-3pm
1601 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe

TAI Modern is thrilled to present History Painting, an exhibition of new work by American artist Jason Salavon opening Friday, November 29. Salavon is a pioneering and internationally recognized artist who has created generative and data-driven artwork since the 1990s. History Painting employs a host of “custom software, imaginings, and elbow grease,” to reinterpret the history of the universe via eight-hundred idiosyncratic encyclopedic entries created by the artist.

With History Painting, Salavon debuts new processes that stretch and contract the understanding of generative AI, beyond its daily application into a technically dense and highly aesthetic medium in which he uses to paint these digital canvases. He says, “AI learns a universe of possibilities and it likes to stay in the center of that universe. We’ve created a tool that forces the AI out of that universe by modifying a model to make it do things that it’s not supposed to do.”

Launching from the art historical tradition of sixteenth and seventeenth century history painting, Salavon uses digital techniques he has been honing and innovating for the past thirty years to tell the story of the universe in four large panels—Origins, Emergence, Sapiens, and Modernity. These digitally layered art objects, shown in concert with looping animations made from the same prompts, exist on the cutting-edge of where, Salavon says, “the technical and the conceptual start to bleed into one another.”

TAI Modern warmly welcomes you to the artist’s reception on Friday, November 29 and a gallery walkthrough with the artist on Saturday, November 30.

To learn more, click here.