Ignacio García Sánchez

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MACHINE

The works in this project about machines striving to produce human art are the fruit of the manual labour of a flesh-and-blood artist. Although created using analogue media, they incorporate visual elements that allude to digital image processing, playing with the dialectical tension between human beings and artists made of silicon and steel.
In each drawing we see a fictional machine in the midst of its creative process. The scenes depicted draw on the Western iconographic tradition of the "artist at work", using myths, legends and anecdotes that have shaped the canonical idea of what artistic work consists of. A series of narratives that still persist in the popular imagination today, despite being associated with such questionable concepts as 'genius' or 'inspiration'. The works produced, however, fall far short of expectations. Their apparent failure raises questions about the nature of work, artistic creation and the consequences of future total automation.
Portrait of the Artist as a Machine departs from commonplace notions of what it means to make art and points to highly speculative scenarios. In a future where the automation of not only physical but also intellectual labour frees us from the imperative of creativity, would we let machines continue to produce 'art' as a surplus of autonomous processes with no practical purpose, while we devote ourselves to other, less demanding pastimes? Or would we continue to create, emancipated from all material necessity, in ways never before imagined?