HESSE FLATOW is pleased to present EX VOTO IN SILICO, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Kirsten Deirup, marking her second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Derived from the Latin term “voto” for votive or offering, and the pseudo Latin “in silico” for when an object has been run through a computer, the exhibition’s title references the clashing of items created by the human hand and its parallel simulacrum produced by Artificial Intelligence.
Deirup’s compositions centralize gem-encrusted flowers improbably sprouting from the ground or vessels and spray bottles materializing in unlikely locations. Proxying as totems, items are deliberately placed despite appearing nonsensical. There is an encroaching sense of the uncanny within Deirup’s futuristic dreamscapes. Peculiar arrangements of objects beyond the scope of their typical domain suggest a human presence despite the absence of the figure. A gloved hand masks the robot underneath, while the plastic materiality of spray bottles has been anthropomorphized.
Placing herself in the mind of a sentient robot, Deirup attempts to understand where thinking and communication are lost in translation. The interchange between the real and digital reveal possible “glitches” highlighted in Deirup’s works. In Year Zero, she imagines AI reinventing the story of Genesis, misunderstanding a tennis ball as a stand-in for a fruit on the Tree of Life. While this equivalence may be viewed as an intentional act of symbolism, entrenched in a distinctly human impulse to organize and create meaning, AI’s mandate to replicate similar thought processes comes across as a critical error, ironically resulting in the humanizing of the machine.
