L’AVANT GALERIE VOSSEN at PARIS PHOTO 2023 in the digital sector, an invitation by Nina Roehrs - Roehrs & Boetsch

Photography in the digital age is a very hot topic of the year 2023.
Until now, visual creation and photography were perceived as preserved because creation was reserved for humans, the gaze of an artist was unique. Creation was then perceived as untouchable by the productions of the machine.

The year 2023 has seen the arrival of a wave of “artificial” images, created with very more general public and easy-to-use generation tools to produce ever more realistic images.
Some press titles from the newspaper Liberation for instance, really interested in the subject of Photography and Artificial Intelligence: 'Photography facing AI: The image will henceforth be a source of doubt' or 'Is AI going to kill or save photography?' are there to testify that the appearance of Artificial Intelligence to create very realistic images is seen as much as a danger for the profession of photographer as possible ways to explore new possibilities.

At Paris Photo 2023, the artists presented by L'Avant Galerie, Robbie Barrat, u2p050 and Albertine Meunier, are not photographers but well-known digital artists.
They explore the capabilities of the tools : create their own images database or computer programs to master the creation of their images, or even observe the performance of these images generation tools over time in production of a series of artworks. By there becoming curators of their own work.

They are the explorers of new possibilities, and demonstrate that whatever the tool is, the artist's gaze prevails.

This exhibition shows that, contrary to what was read in the media during the spectacular sale at Christie’s, the machine does not create alone. Not being gifted of consciousness, the machine can not think. But it opens up a new field of possibilities, introducing a reflection on the act of creation in itself and the status of the images it generates.
Do these images create a new creative space for Ronan Barrot or do they provoke in him an irrepressible desire to «rework» them for them to become his? Can the painter continue to create serenely against the production of infinite images of the machine?
This exhibition demystifies the role of artificial intelligence in the creative process by showing the place of man at all crucial moments of its development. Neither magical nor sacred, these images coming from the artificial intelligence are above all the fruit of a human intention.
Instigating a meeting between Ronan Barrot’s works, very thick in paint, and the production of images generated by Robbie Barrat, all in pixel, thanks to an artificial intelligence, seemed to us a possible way to approach these questions, without predicting the answers…
Ronan Barrot will soon be able to proclaim the paternity of 9 billion skulls created by Robbie Barrat!

Written by L'Avant Galerie, reviewed and corrected by Milan Deroubaix.