FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is proud to present Images + Pictures, the second gallery solo exhibition of newly Saint Louis-based artist Tiffany Calvert. This exhibition features eleven paintings and one multimedia painting in her ongoing exploration of the position of painting in the digital era. Referencing the Dutch and Flemish traditions of still-life painting and their idealized view of nature, Calvert’s work begins as a collaboration with Artificial Intelligence technology followed by her own painterly interpretation and intervention. The resulting work blurs the origin of its creator, leaving the viewer to question where the computer-generated image ends and painting begins – the synthetic versus the organic. Images + Pictures will be on view from 12 February through 5 April 2025 with an artist reception on 5 April 5-9pm (the final day of the exhibition) in conjunction with the Arts District New Orleans’ monthly First Saturday Gallery Openings.

Calvert discusses the inspiration of his recent work . . .

My work engages diverse artistic media, bringing together traditional artistic techniques into direct engagement with new media. In this latest work, painting grapples with its digital counterpart - trying to disguise itself into digital imagery while at the same time differentiating itself as material, human and tangible.

Since early 2020, I have used artificial intelligence to generate the images onto which I paint. The images printed on canvas are the output of image generating machine learning models (StyleGAN) trained on over 1,000 images of Dutch and Flemish still life paintings. The machine learning models generate forms reminiscent of still life, but distorted and unexpected.

This exhibition includes new works which engage video and projection directly with painting. In #455, I have painted onto an LCD screen oriented vertically. The AI-generated video weaves together hundreds of images which the machine learning model has generated. The oil paint, first applied in translucent layers and then highlighted with limited opaques, adapts historical glazing techniques originally developed to generate depth as ambient light filters through its surface. In #456, an AI-generated video is projected onto a painting, mixing with the imagery and animating its surface.

I have chosen still life paintings for their important place in the lineage of painterly representation, and in the history of art markets: they are the most basic form onto which artists have hung questions about perception and reality. Dutch flower paintings in particular possess an inherent abstraction and objecthood as inflated currency. In the 17th century they circulated as image placeholders for the valuable tulips they depicted, much like digital imagery and NFTs do today.

The mutations and abstraction in my work highlight the biases and distortions which result from the opaque datasets which operate in our lives. Like the invisible hand of the market, AI in our lives is largely invisible. By collaborating with AI, my work investigates how these neural networks shape our decisions by predicting and replicating needs and desires.

Tiffany Calvert received her MFA in 2005 from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and her BA in 1998 from Oberlin College. She first exhibited at Ferrara Showman Gallery in the 2020 group exhibition Art in Doom, curated by Matthew Weldon Showman. Calvert’s work has also been exhibited at the Lawrimore Project (Seattle, WA), E.TAY Gallery (NY), the Speed Museum (Louisville, KY), KMAC Museum (Louisville, KY), the Susquehanna Art Museum (PA), and Cadogan Contemporary (London, UK), among others. Residencies include the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, I-Park, and ArtOmi International Arts Center where she received a Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship. Calvert has received grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She is Associate Professor & Chair, MFA in Visual Art at the Sam Fox School of Design + Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on Facebook (@FerraraShowmanGallery), Twitter (@FerraraShowman), and Instagram (@FerraraShowmanGallery) via the hashtags: #TiffanyCalvert #FerraraShowmanGallery, and #ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.