I recently re-read an article about my paintings that was published in a catalogue, and found a section in it that I found fascinating. To get the story moving forward, I'll first reprint that article here. It's also my simple theory on painting, so I hope you'll bear with me.
Although painting may at first glance appear to be bound by many institutional constraints, I feel that it is precisely because these institutions are established that the field for expression becomes clearer. This may be a privilege that painting has compared to other new media systems. However, if we consider that systems are renewed with social changes, the existence of institutionalized painting has come to be questioned in a society with recent new values. That is why I have been trying to rethink painting recently, with the determination to not shy away from new systems. And the result was that I found a new form of painting called "flow painting," which maintained most of the systems that painting had possessed up until now, and I was reminded once again that something that could be called the core of painting that I had inside me resonated with my view of art unintentionally. And because all of these things in flow painting emerge suddenly from the middle of the production process, it is possible to make the source of the image unknown, compared to representational painting, which requires a prior image. This may be the innate power of painting, even when compared to AI, which can only be activated if it has a purpose; it has the hidden power to induce the emergence of initial images, and it evoked within me the feeling that this leads to liberation from a world bound by existing things.
The above is the text, but there are parts in this text where AI is mentioned, and expressions that criticize the attitude and ideas of being goal-oriented. Recently, I have felt an indescribable discomfort at the current emergence of AI, which is a sign that it will change the very structure of society in the future, and this strongly synchronized with my creative thinking in painting, and I reacted particularly to this passage. In my case, when I thought about freedom, I simply concluded that it was a simple premise that it had no purpose, but I think somewhere along the line I realized that it would be quite interesting if I applied that to AI. The use of AI in today's society is imagined as something that predicts situations, presents immediate solutions, and promotes the efficiency of everything. It is certainly expected that this will increase immediate convenience and lead to more enjoyable lives, but I cannot make it match my image of freedom, and I cannot shake the feeling of an essential discomfort. If AI could avoid goal-orientedness and show us new possibilities, it would be very interesting for me, but looking at AI today, it does not seem possible. My current view is that no matter what AI goes on, it will only be able to dream of electric sheep, and will never be able to obtain real sheep.
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