CARLOS SANDOVAL


RECENT WORK  THE THRESHOLD  STATEMENT  ABOUT  CV


POST-COVID-SERIES, 98/98

Berlin, Cuernavaca, 2021-25

Ink on paper, 15x15cm on A4 acid-free paper

 

Interrupted iterative GAN-based projection,

collapsing arbitrary images onto a narrow

portrait manifold in a few recursive steps

 

2023-24, Chongquin International Culture Art Center, Chongquin, China

Group exhibition, Curated by Pashmin Art Managment


This series originates from an early AI portrait system that iteratively projected arbitrary images—sometimes non-figurative objects—onto the visual language of Renaissance portraiture. Through a small number of by-purpose interrupted, nested transformations, the system collapsed noise into symmetry, texture into flesh, and ambiguity into a face. The process did not preserve identity; it erased it, converging instead on a historically conditioned ideal.

 

The images resulting from an aborted process were used as the basis for this ink-drawings series. By translating algorithmic outcomes back into hand-drawn form, the work reverses the direction of generation: from computational certainty to human gesture. Line, hesitation, and omission re-enter where the system is trying to resolve form. In Post-Covid Series I treat AI as a sculptural tool rather than a creative partner—an instrument that removes variance until a culturally inherited image remains.