The creatures of Pablo Corral Vega evolve in silence, bearing an ineffable mystery — that of a birth generated by Artificial Intelligence. Their creator has designed their universe down to the smallest detail. A long list of words defined the roles, settings, postures, shadows, lights, and colors of a sophisticated staging. And infused it with emotion.
A trained lawyer, words are no strangers to him. Nor is the image: Pablo Corral Vega spent fifteen years as a photographer for the prestigious American magazine National Geographic. For him, it was a way to rebel against the logical and rational world of law — a path that now leads him to analyze Artificial Intelligence in order to better tame it.
Fascinated by the connections between founding myths, creativity, culture, and technology, Pablo Corral Vega spent a year as an artist-in-residence at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying neuroscience and the human-computer relationship within the highly selective Media Lab.
“All civilization is built on language. We speak to connect with one another. But if there is now a machine that speaks and seems to think, what is it that makes us unique and truly human?”
As an aesthetic response to this philosophical question, Pablo Corral Vega brings words to life, invoking an extravagant bestiary that neither Hieronymus Bosch nor Salvador Dalí would have disavowed. “During the Renaissance, the bestiary reflected both the complexity and diversity of creation, as well as the darker side of humanity.” Here, he presents an improbable fauna alongside a gallery of strangely familiar characters, blending all South American cultural influences and playfully or solemnly challenging the traditional values of Latin America.
Yet this fantastical, baroque, and lavish opera also toys with our perception of reality. This quasi-spontaneous generation of virtual doubles — charmers from a parallel dimension — winks at us from their digital Eden. Their reality is not ours. And yet, the presence and accuracy of Pablo Corral Vega’s portraits lend them a humanity as tangible as that of the artist who brought them to life.
Copyright 2018 Galerie Guernieri Mentions légales