Janek Simon
70-80 cm
FDM 3D print, polyactic acid (PLA)
The figures in the “Meta Folklore” series, printed in 3-D figure technology, are created with the help of artificial intelligence based on a dozen thousand photographs of non-academic sculptures from around the world. At the heart of this endeavor is a Gan-type neural network trained by the artist, which generates images that are a kind of essence of the collection fed into it. Based on these images, Simon develops 3D models, which he then prints and assembles in a self-designed and equipped studio.
Multicolored and original in shape, the figures are a seductive materialization of the idea of a creative, transcultural, anti-colonial community operating based on free, democratized technology. The forms of these sculptures seem futuristic yet intuitively close and familiar as if logically derived from a long tradition of non-academic figural sculpture. It is an artistic, technological, and political fantasy, a vision of universal contemporary folklore, generated with the support of artificial intelligence, but using authentic ethical sources. Simon turns to archaic forms of figures and totems and weaves threads of humanism, spirituality, and anarchy into the fluid world of the future.