You might recognize Zancan for his lush supernatural flora digital artwork, which made him the top-selling artist on the Tezos blockchain. But according to the generative artist, as much as he uses algorithms and code to create his works on-chain, he also sought to do them “off screen.” That is to say, he wants to give his virtual creations physical dimensions.
“There’s a need and a search for the tangible,” Zancan told Artnet News, “or that extra soul specific to reality.”
His search could finally be coming to an end. On April 13, the French artist is launches its new series, titled “Organic Matr”, with large-scale canvases taken from his generative renderings. Although trained as an oil painter, Zancan did not paint these works himself; rather, they represent his latest explorations of “new plotter practices”. In other words, they were produced by robotic collaborators – tools designed by a company called art master.
Detail of one of the works from Zancan’s “Organic Matr” series. Photo: Matt Coote and Federica Berra, courtesy of Artmatr.
Founded in 2014, Artmatr currently runs studios in Israel and Brooklyn, set up with its proprietary painting robots, which are massive, highly sophisticated plotters programmed to paint based on software input. These room-sized machines are the product of nearly a decade of research and development that draws on the expertise of artists and scientists at MIT. Their goal is to help artists physically achieve digital artwork with maximum control and creativity.
It’s a process, says Ben Trittthe artist and educator who founded Artmatr, enabling “all the endless ways an artist wants to express themselves by translating a flat image into something that has the sensuality and story that is grounded in the physical.”
One of Artmatr’s robots at work. Photo: Matt Coote and Federica Berra, courtesy of Artmatr.
This means that Artmatr is not just a piece of 3D printing or manufacturing equipment. Its machines allow artists to specify what is painted and how, from the ink or brush used, to the pressure and precision of application, to the tilt of the canvas. These paints are also executed in layers to better build up the paint, blend the colors, or allow for drying time. In fact, it’s such a unique technique that Artmatr had to deploy an entirely different term to describe it.
“We don’t print it, we don’t produce it,” Rafael Feitelberg, CEO of Artmatr, told Artnet News. “Were important he.”
And at a time when art is increasingly screen-based, Artmatr has had no shortage of customers. Traditional painters including Barnaby Furnas, Matthew Ritchie, Eric Fischl, James Jean and Maria Kreyn have taken advantage of the company’s significant technology, but more so a growing group of digital and generative artists.
Detail of Matthew Stone, Stone monument with flower offering (2022), a digital print on linen. Photo courtesy of The Hole.
by British artist Matthew Stone AI Paintingscurrently on view at The Hole, were imported by Artmatr, as were a number of Tyler Hobbs’ latest works for his “QQL: analogues” exhibition, currently on view at Pace. About Artmatr’s technique, Hobbs, who also sits on Artmatr’s advisory board, told Artnet News, “It’s fantastic to go beyond just printing and get into really rich media. and complex.”
Even the best-selling NFT artist of all time (we can’t name him but you know him) worked with Artmatr. “We’re inundated,” Tritt said of the demand from digital artists. “We can’t keep up.”
Installation view of “QQL: Analogs” at Pace Gallery. Photo courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Zancan himself was introduced to Artmatr by Ryan Roybal of NFT Collective, a Web3 consultancy that represents the artist and has partnered with the Robotics Lab for this latest launch. For Roybal, quite simply, “what Artmatr does is art”.
“You embody this artist’s narrative on a much larger scale,” he told Artnet News of the tactility the company offers. “It’s about playing with physics and scale to allow people to connect with [Zancan’s] body of work to a deeper emotion because you can see the line weights behind or how the charcoal is put on the canvas.
This presence of the hand is a cornerstone for Tritt, who has described Artmatr’s approach as “the automation of art that captures the artist’s hand”. Indeed, to watch the machines import one of Zancan’s canvases with a tilted piece of white chalk is also to observe how the lines smear and spread in such a way as to indicate an (almost) human gesture.
Detail of one of the works from Zancan’s “Organic Matr” series. Photo: Matt Coote and Federica Berra, courtesy of Artmatr.
Which brings us to the question: Why use robots to do the painting?
For Tritt, it’s about automating tasks to allow artists to focus on areas that most intensely require their expertise. “Much of the art of making paintings is very trivial,” he said. “Blending colors isn’t something you have to be a genius to do.” (Artmatr, by the way, has formed partnerships with chemists to help with his material work and medical device makers to supply precision valves to dispense the paint.)
He encouraged the vision of these robots as tools, much like Steve Jobs once described the computer as a “bicycle for our minds”. Says Tritt: “It’s a bike for human creativity. It allows people to be less dependent on what we used to call talent, and more dependent on their imagination. »
Feitelberg referred to Seurat’s famous Pointillist canvases, each of which took the Post-Impressionist about two to three years to complete. “What if he had a machine that could have helped him?” he said. “Would that take away from the breakthrough that was pointillism?”
He added, “There’s something about the purity of the artistic intent and not necessarily about the mechanics.”
A Zancan work in progress at Artmatr. Photo: Matt Coote and Federica Berra, courtesy of Artmatr.
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Zancan, for his part, admitted to feeling both “curious and dubious” when he first heard about Artmatr. “The fantasy of having robots painted is not new,” he explained, “but I knew the reality was much more complex than the idea.”
And it’s. While believing that “there was still a long way to go”, the artist was won over by the enthusiasm, energy and creativity of the Artmatr team, made up of artist-engineers. It certainly didn’t hurt that Hobbs signed on to the technology either.
“The whole time I was at the studio, the robots were working on Tyler’s artwork for his Pace show,” Zancan said. “It was no longer a fantasy, it was real.”
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