TITLES and Gray Area Present: Dream Models @ Gray Area
What does it mean to own an image, when the image no longer points back to anything real?
This spring, TITLES and Gray Area gave five artists an unusual brief: train a custom AI model on your own creative practice, and see what it dreams up.
On May 9, Arvida Byström, Huntrezz Janos, Lou Fauroux, Yvonne Fang, and Sharon Zheng unveil their models for the first time, and explore what happens when a body of work begins generating from within itself.
Curated by Alice Scope.
Arvida Byström is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in ideas that deal with the internet and its social, aesthetic and commercial implications. She is known for employing a hyper- feminine aesthetic to explore themes concerning the complexities of femininity, identity, body image, social dynamics, emerging technologies and economic principles through primarily photography, performance and sculpture work. By her early teens, Byström was publishing stylized portraits of herself on social media platforms, effectively foreshadowing the communicative power of the selfie. The following years saw her evolve into somewhat of a proxy for a young generation cultivating their identity, expression, and influence on predominantly image-based social platforms. Her early understanding of the internet, its aesthetic, and its pervasiveness led to an artistic practice perfectly adept at deconstructing and theorizing its language.
Huntrezz Janos is as much herself as she is the information being relayed to you now through this sequence of symbols. Born to Hungarian architect Szabó Gyöngyi and metal icon Scoonie Gee in Los Angeles, CA, Huntrezz is a light-speed organism determined to reach a distant Antarctic destiny by way of a circuitous path of digital synthesis involving animated video/game art, 3D printed armor, Augmented Reality, sustainable architecture, and rhyme performance along with a laundry list of other, increasingly esoteric practices. Janos emerges from her various disguises to present afro-futurist media designed to delight, confound, and confront those of us entangled in this epoch. She has showcased her work across platforms such as Redcat, Honor Fraser Gallery, Tate Museum, The Modern, MoMA, Adult Swim, Postmaster’s Gallery, Vellum LA, Transfer Gallery, The Athens Biennale, LACMA, Photographer’s Gallery, Torrance Art Museum, and Onassis ONX. She holds a BFA in experimental animation from California Institute of the Arts (2018) and an MS from the University of Southern California (2024).
Lou Fauroux is a visual artist, filmmaker, and DJ whose films, sculptures, and installations explore the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence and virtual technologies. They began creating moving images within a community of porn producers and actresses in Los Angeles and describe themself as “a true product of bedroom culture,” shaped by MTV, YouTube, pirated American series, and Tumblr and Reddit forums. Reworking these influences through a queer lens, Fauroux builds new mythologies that dissect the power structures and excesses of the entertainment and tech industries. Their work speculates on the future of the Internet and a world marked by climate crisis, fascism, inequality, totalitarianism, and unchecked technological acceleration.
Sharon Zheng is a multidisciplinary artist and engineer from Toronto, currently based in San Francisco. Her work coexists across digital and print mediums, drawing inspiration from her personal life and upbringing. Through art and shared creation, she invites others into her world, offering moments of reflection, connection, and play.