Vectors on the Rocks

ARTXCODE is pleased to present an intimate collection of Helena Sarin's latest ceramics.

Each piece is entirely hand-crafted and adorned with designs inspired by her AI-generated artworks in a practice playfully dubbed potteryGAN. Combining traditional craftsmanship with strains of generative spontaneity and sharp wit, Vectors on the Rocks embodies the artist's technical brilliance, intelligent humor and thought-provoking approach to craft in the age of machine automation.

IRL PRE-SALE PREVIEW

LUME Studios, New York from 27 to 29 September 2024.

ONLINE PUBLIC SALE

Starts on Wednesday 2 October 2024 from 12PM ET

Since Sarin discovered Generative Adversarial Networks in 2017, she has played consistently with their potential to interact with the analog world. She quickly became a defining figure of the AI art movement by training neural networks from scratch on her physical artworks, ranging from watercolors and pastels to ink drawings and photographs. The outputs are colorful and energetic, bearing almost indiscernible traces of her physical creations within the algorithms' interpretations. By forging models that invoke the layered materiality of her hand-crafted datasets, Sarin not only embraces the weird and wonderful, but the beauty in human imperfection. Now, these generated images serve as inspiration for potteryGAN, further fusing physical materiality with machine-learning.

To create her ceramics, Sarin starts by selecting one of her 'GANified' images. She then works in Blender, a 3D modeling tool, to design the particularities of her physical piece, before 3D printing the shape to make a plaster mold for casting her tumblers. Once the form is created and fired in the kiln, Sarin begins painting with underglaze, creating intricate designs that stay true to the colors and patterns of the original GAN work. The pieces are fired again before she adds a transparent glaze for their final, glossy finish. From analog to digital and back again, Sarin skillfully integrates layers of creative nuance along the way. Her tumblers are neither human nor machine generated, they are both, expanding our understanding of what is possible when GANs are embraced as just one of many tools in a multifaceted approach to art-making.

Vectors on the Rocks comprises sixteen unique tumblers, each accompanied by a mixology manual by Sarin's long-time creative collaborator and chef, Kate Ray. This book foregrounds the ceramics as functional art pieces, objects to be used and enjoyed as much as viewed. While potteryGAN represents a new approach for the artist, her philosophy and style is always resolute: whether physical, digital or an uncanny mixture between the two.