GEN/GEN: Generative Generations

Gazelli Art House in collaboration with tech partner Verisart is thrilled to introduce their first co-curated exhibition GEN/GEN: Generative Generations, taking over all three floors of Gazelli Art House’s central Mayfair gallery. This exhibition continues the gallery’s longstanding interest in and promotion of digital art, intertwining with the historical angle of the gallery’s program.

Following Gazelli Art House’s The AARON Retrospective, and ahead of a major 2024 museum survey, the gallery has deepened investigations into Computer Art pioneer Harold Cohen’s practice by aligning his work with three of his peers – Ernest Edmonds, William Latham, and Stephen Willats – while recontextualising these works through an array of contemporary generative artists.

GEN/GEN: Generative Generations will feature Cohen’s seminal works from the mid-80s alongside the In AARON’s Garden series (2007), both created via AARON (a computer programme the artist designed to create art independently). Works from fractal geometrist Edmonds will include U-matic tape recordings of AI programmed film and computer generated, hand modified images. Among other works, Computer Scientist Latham shows an early piece from his critical FormSynth series – inspired by Tantric art and the Natural History Museum – whose exploration of the evolution of artistic systems became the blueprint for later software systems, Mutator and Form Grow. From conceptual forerunner Willats, works from the Change Exercise and Unit Drawings series demonstrate the artist’s avant garde approach to perception: active diagrams that relay the complexities of our behaviour and environment.