StandardVision Artist Showcase: Between Clarity & Ephemerality with Revolutionary Generative Artist Casey REAS

In collaboration with Vellum LA, StandardVision has curated a site-specific artist showcase from renowned generative artist Casey REAS’ Untitled Film Stills series, on view across a number of StandardVision’s large-scale exterior displays throughout Los Angeles through October 31st, and coinciding with REAS’ solo exhibition at Vellum LA entitled Conjured Terrain.

Considered the “Godfather of Generative Art,” REAS is a pillar of the Los Angeles art community, and one of the most important and beloved new media artists working today. His work stands in contrast to popular narratives about art created using code, especially given the recent hype around AI image generators, which have been trained on vast datasets and are able to produce plausible imagery in many styles when a user “prompts” them. With Untitled Film Stills, REAS engages machine learning as material not to quickly produce a functional image, but instead to thoughtfully examine imagery’s ability to contain and convey realities.

Each Untitled Film Still image is a frame from an imagined film. The generative adversarial network (GAN) machine learning models used for Untitled Film Stills are capable of producing high-fidelity, photographic images, but that’s not the direction of this work. Each Untitled Film Still is an uncanny picture from a dream, evocative of the history of oneiric cinema. The images oscillate between representation and abstraction, and require interpretation to make meaning.

About the series, REAS shares, “the idea is to reveal another reality within the original film, something that has the character of the original work, but is transformed into something else. A film is a perspective from which to view the world, and a set of Untitled Film Still images are a unique view of the original film that produces a new and alternate reality in an unexpected way.”

REAS’ software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. His work ranges from small works on paper to urban-scale installations and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations with architects and musicians. REAS’ work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. REAS is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Catch works from Casey REAS’ Untitled Film Stills series on view at Melrose & Spaulding, 3rd Street Crossing, and 888 N Vermont, through October 31st, learn more about REAS on his website, and read about Vellum LA’s exhibition of REAS’ work Conjured Terrain here.