Andrés Pachón's AI-Generated Taxonomies at Shazar Gallery
Shazar Gallery in Naples presents 'Class(h)', the first Italian solo exhibition of Madrid-born artist Andrés Pachón (b. 1985). The show explores classification through large panels of small photographs generated by an artificial intelligence trained on a dataset from the New York Public Library's archive. Pachón's work merges history, ethnography, and technology, using AI to produce dreamlike, lysergic images that challenge absolute categories. A black box interactive video installation allows visitors to search the archive and observe the AI's synthetic thought processes, highlighting the interplay between communication, perception, and creation. The exhibition references the 2018 sale of the AI-generated 'Portrait of Edmond de Belamy' at Christie's for $432,500, which sparked debates on artistic authorship. Pachón's AI, by optimizing similarities and forcing realism, creates fantastic bestiaries and deconstructs physiognomies of old actors, offering visions of unexplored worlds. The show runs at Shazar Gallery in Naples, with photographs by Danilo Donzelli.
Key facts
- Andrés Pachón was born in Madrid in 1985.
- 'Class(h)' is Pachón's first solo exhibition in Italy.
- The exhibition is held at Shazar Gallery in Naples.
- The AI was trained on a dataset from the New York Public Library archive.
- The show includes a black box interactive video installation.
- The AI-generated 'Portrait of Edmond de Belamy' sold at Christie's in 2018 for $432,500.
- Exhibition photographs were taken by Danilo Donzelli.
- The exhibition opened in 2021.
Entities
Artists
- Andrés Pachón
- Raffaele Orlando
- Danilo Donzelli
Institutions
- Shazar Gallery
- New York Public Library
- Christie's
- Artribune
Locations
- Madrid
- Spain
- Naples
- Italy
- New York