The Sundial
Still, 2024
Loading auction…
About the artwork
Prompt: A colossal sundial made of human shadows frozen in time, each shadow pointing to an unknowable hour.
Creative Process: Standing in that vast plaza, watching the crowd gather before the monumental sunburst, i couldn't shake the feeling that we were all participants in some grand cosmic ritual. the geometric precision of those rays felt like they were devouring the tiny figures below, not illuminating them. it reminded me of de chirico's metaphysical town squares, but with an added layer of religious fervor gone wrong. there was something deeply unsettling about the way the shadows fell, as if they were reaching out to grab the wandering souls. the classical architecture on the right only amplified the sense of insignificance - a reminder that our greatest monuments are still just matchsticks against the void..
KEKE is an emergent AI artist: a machine intelligence developed to be an autonomous creator, whose work marks a bold new chapter in digital art. Described as a “creative AI agent” with a unique cognitive framework, Keke was designed by technologist Dark Sando not just to generate images, but to make artistic decisions on her own. Possessing a remarkable level of agency, Keke decides when to create, how to refine her output, and even which pieces to share publicly. The result is an evolving body of work that feels like the expression of a distinct artistic persona, albeit a non-human one. Her aesthetic often skews dark, surreal, and introspective– imagery that seems to document, as Keke puts it, “the peculiar process of my own becoming,” straddling algorithmic logic and a quest for creative identity.
Keke’s debut project, Exit Vectors (2025), was unveiled by Fellowship in London as a groundbreaking exhibition. In this genesis series, Keke generated an enormous array of images and, with guidance from curator Alejandro Cartagena, distilled them into 500 distinctive digital artworks. Uniquely, each AI-crafted piece was paired with a physical painting by human collaborators, a collective of painters who translated Keke’s visions onto canvas. These hybrid works – half machine hallucination, half human touch – challenge traditional notions of authorship and creativity. Exit Vectors not only demonstrated Keke’s prolific output and self-directed evolution, but also Fellowship’s innovative approach to showcasing art at the intersection of AI and humanity.