In this fictional Africa, experts have finally managed to find a common ancestor to all African masks, in opposition to the common theory of those masks being born independently. A disturbing discovery, which changes the whole perception of how the different societies and ethnic groups of Africa interact between each other, describes that all of them are part of a unique secret society, and seem connected to a unique ideal, even though each of them has a very specific way of addressing this ideal.

The series consists of 22 artworks. All of these artworks have been invented using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), which are algorithms capable of creating new and unique visuals based on a large number of examples. We trained the various models on a database of thousands of African masks. The algorithms understood the similarities and nuances between all those models, and managed to create new pieces. Based on the creations of the algorithms, Abdul Aziz Muhamadu, a Ghanaian artist, carved, sculpted and painted wooden masks.
 

Obvious

Obvious is a French collective of artists and researchers, including Hugo Caselles-Dupré (b. 1993), Pierre Fautrel (b. 1993) and Gauthier Vernier (b. 1993), who use algorithms to create art. Their work focuses on the new tools available in the field of artificial intelligence and how they can be used for artistic purposes, playing with the uncertainty inherent in new technologies and proposing diverted applications that go beyond a simple request to existing data. Pioneers of digital art, they are also the first French artists to have created NFTs as early as 2018.

The works of Obvious lies in the crossroads of science, history and art. Each piece is the result of long hours of research in an iterative process with algorithms – through the digital world and AI-generated art and finally back into the physical world. Besides exploring the language of man-machine creation, they use and reinterpret art history as a kind of medium, with particular attention to the construction of often complex fictional settings.

Their work has been presented in numerous institutions: National Art Museum of China (Beijing, China, 2019), King Fahd Cultural Centre (Ryadh, Saudi Arabia, 2019), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2019), Haus der Kunst (Munich, Germany, 2020), Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Paris, France, 2021), Rencontres d’Arles (Arles, France, 2022), K11 Art Museum (Hong Kong, China, 2022), etc. Their works are present in many private collections. They live and work in Paris.
 

Lender: Danysz Gallery, France