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This text was written by Rold for the Dauphine Prize for Contemporary Art on the theme of “Ruptures”.

The painter is immortalized in action. Looking down, he brings the brush to his palette. His right hand has six fingers. The painting looks like a self-portrait. In fact, it evokes an allegorical representation of the notion of artificial intelligence.

Inspired by Velázquez's Las Meninas, the composition takes up the posture of the Spanish artist as he paints his work. In Les Mots et les choses, Michel Foucault suggests that this 17th-century painting represents a major epistemological turning point in the history of Western painting. Confronted with the reverse side of Velazquez's canvas, the theoretical viewer of the work can for the first time see himself as the subject and actor of the representation.

At the level of the painter, the introduction of AI into the process of artistic creation generates a movement opposite to that described by the French philosopher. The mirror shown here - another borrowing from Velazquez's original composition - reveals the artist's new condition of exteriority in relation to his work. The painter becomes a residual presence. He is a mere spectator-reflector of his canvases, undergoing an experience of radical dispossession.

RoldIA, is an SDXL model (image generation via artificial intelligence) designed by Benjamin Azoulay (@babelgallery_lab). This model is capable of producing original works that faithfully reproduce the spirit and style of Rold's paintings.