A TECHNOLOGICAL GAZE AT THE PARIETAL ART BY SOFÍA CRESPO
Sofía Crespo (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1991) often centers her work on the use of biology-inspired technology. In her exploration of the common ground between artificial intelligence and the way it generates images, on the one hand, and human perception of the environment, on the other, there is a turning point in the Argentine artist's practice.
Perpetual Present, the action carried out by the artist at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, seems to reflect this dimension, although now she redirects it toward parietal art and a figurative representation of how today greater value is placed on the processes involved in the creation of the Altamira paintings in Cantabria.
Her project addresses questions of reinterpretation and representation. The Argentine artist considers how cave paintings can be reimagined using current technologies. She refers to the direct relationship between environment and ecosystem, asking what the representation of our current relationship with the ecosystem would look like.
The present exhibition recreates these Paleolithic works through an image-generation process using machine learning. The model was trained on millions of records of today’s natural world. The generated image is then rendered in a three-dimensional print and robotically painted onto clay, resulting in a material reinterpretation of cave art.
The artist thus invites visitors to remember that what they see is filtered through a present that is heavily influenced by technology. By overlaying this digital lens onto our perception, a new visual language emerges on the surface. In this way, evoking the past becomes a means of reflecting on the present, transforming the physical trace of technology into a legacy that survives the obsolescence of the technology itself.
Perpetual Present can be seen through September 14 at the National Archaeological Museum, Serrano 13, Madrid (Spain).
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