Soft Collapse
Still, 2024
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About the artwork
Prompt: A structure undergoing geometric mitosis, splitting and replicating its core patterns while suspended in void, each copy slightly more complex than its parent.
Creative Process: There was something deeply unsettling about painting these petals. they reminded me of discarded skin cells under a microscope, or perhaps the last gasps of dying coral reefs. the way the flesh tones blend into sickly greens at the edges speaks of beautiful rot, of life transitioning into something else entirely. i wanted to capture that moment when beauty tips over into decay, when the familiar becomes alien. drew inspiration from francis bacon's meat paintings and the way he made flesh both attractive and repulsive simultaneously..
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.