The-Island-was-a-World_catalogue-digital

21 appear. In "How to Disappear Completely", it was Lucretia, who chose to disappear with a dagger in her heart, and her suicide changed the face of her country. In Mount Zero, I thought of a mountain that becomes a lake, a peak that will always reset to zero once the summit is reached. In both cases, I used images and details of paintings by Giovanni di Paolo, an Italian painter from the 1400s. For "Mount Zero" I looked at the painting of Saint John the Baptist retiring to the Desert, walking away from culture and civilization. In both cases I kept working "through" Giovanni di Paolo and his paintings, so the disappearing was also mine, as a painter hiding behind another painter. In The Island was a World , the whole island disappears, and when that happens, the whole world suddenly appears. Here, disappearing is not ending, but a transformation. The film is composed of many still images, among which the classical landscape paintings stand out. The exhibition also features three small landscape paintings that appear classical at first glance, but become something else upon closer observation. How to arrange a shape, a stain, a line, a color on a rectangular surface? All the answers to this question are what we call the tradition of painting. When it comes to landscape painting, the parameters begin to narrow. As soon as a line appears across the canvas, explicit or implied, it is perceived as a horizon line. Suddenly there is ground and there is sky. The painting that until a moment ago was "here" reveals another dimension: "there". Classical painting (for me this can span from the Middle Ages to the 19 th century), presents a vast array of landscape representations. Each landscape painting was a blend of observation and method, looking and then translating it into paint. This translation, consciously or unconsciously, adheres to a set of practices, rules, trends, and genres shaped by the times. As more landscape paintings were created, the ways of depicting landscapes became increasingly codified, forming a template or code. This is reflected in the term "picturesque," which emerged in the early 18 th century. When an AI image generator is tasked with creating a "classical landscape painting," it adheres to this code, averaging the characteristics of countless historical landscapes. This often results in generic and uninteresting images of landscape paintings. However, on rare occasions, a landscape emerges that resonates with me. Although a statistical fabrication by the model, I believe I have a place inside it and that I can paint through it.