// Artist Statement //

An undertrained AI generates distorted images. The first time I saw one of these strange images, it struck me as something fresh—yet, at the same time, oddly familiar.
　Image-generating AIs are modeled on the workings of human neurons. As one such human whose neural pathways serve as the source material for AI, perhaps it’s not strange that I experience a sense of déjà vu, even a kind of nostalgia when looking at such images. I began to wonder if following this sensation might lead me to something buried deep within the neural network—something like the origins of the individual or even humanity itself.
　For this project, I have used a machine learning framework often employed for AI image generation known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Often described as a cat-and-mouse game between forgery and appraisal, GANs increase their precision through repeating image generation and discrimination. Inspired by this dynamic, I have engaged in my own back-and-forth, mimicking the AI that has so thoroughly mimicked us, hoping that I might accidentally prise open the door to the black box.

Seishu Niihira

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ARTCOURT Gallery is pleased to present Phantom Paint, a solo exhibition of new works by Seishu Niihira (born 1988).
　　Through his work, Niihira has focused on the plurality of temporal axes and the noise-like phenomena of spatial distortion and fragmentation caused by overlapping images and colors. Since his days as a student, he has continued his practice with a keen awareness of the dissonance between the mechanisms of perception and visual cognition. Niihira connects technology with social phenomena that hold a sense of reality for him in his ongoing exploration of the contemporary expression of time and space in painting.
　　In his Reflection series, where two distinct motifs are ambiguously layered, Niihira explores the contrasting aspects that coexist within dualities. In his Inversion series, where humans and animals are rendered frame by frame like stop-motion animation, he inverts reality’s supremacy over the fictional world of painting. These works reflect Niihira’s deep interest in the emotional responses stirred within viewers as they engage with paintings. Through his brushwork, he continues creating visual experiences that stimulate our innate desire to see.

“It all began with the emergence of AI-generated images.” Confronted with an AI capable of producing images in no way inferior to those painted by human hands, Niihira felt both a surge of curiosity and a looming sense of crisis about the future of his practice. Driven by these conflicting emotions, he began to develop a new body of work that directly engages with AI image generation. After training an AI on a large dataset of portraits created by human hands, Niihira takes the AI-generated images—portraits that have no tangible presence and do not exist in reality—and meticulously recreates them, employing traditional painting techniques. These works are titled Phantom Paint and form a new series that will be unveiled in this exhibition.
　　Just as machine learning in AI employs neural network technology modeled on the mechanisms of the brain, Niihira has begun exploring points of convergence and insights between his own neural processes and those of AI through the act of painting. His motifs are drawn from portrait-like images in the process of being generated by an AI with a limited training period. This exhibition presents twelve new paintings created between last year and this year.
　　As we enter an era of living together with AI, how will it shape our ways of seeing and the future of painting? To answer the questions elicited by this exhibition, we have invited neuroscientist Doctor Ichiro Fujita to participate in a talk event themed on Art, AI, the Brain, and Ourselves, offering us an opportunity to engage anew with the science of the complex mechanisms of vision and the brain.