A Curious State of Being by Ellen Hawley

AI has changed the way we live in countless ways, and it has definitely “rocked the boat” in the art world. Many art organizations have prohibited AI-generated—and sometimes even digital—artwork from their calls for art and exhibitions. Ellen takes a different approach. Rather than using AI to create the artwork itself, she utilizes it as a curatorial tool, constructing a virtual environment in which works from different periods, mediums, and artists can interact in unexpected ways.

The exhibition brings together historic “Trick Art” photography from the Christopher B. Steiner Collection; contemporary black-and-white photography and 3D collaged masks by Brian Cattelle; drawings by Peter Levinson; upcycled bronze sculptures by Claudia Renfro; and performance, sculpture, and video art by Brazilian artist Tales Fray.

The result is delightfully contorted, macabre, and mysterious.

Turn-of-the-century “cutting-edge” photography and contemporary artwork fuse together in a strange visual conversation. As I move through the exhibition, I feel as though I am traveling through a portal, slipping back and forth between yesterday and today through art. The virtual gallery becomes its own surreal dreamscape.

I especially love comparing and contrasting the historic “Trick Art” photographs with Brian Cattelle’s contemporary black-and-white street photography. In Spiritual Beings Having a Human Experience, #02b, Cattelle captures people in an ethereal, fleeting state of existence.

His work explores the tension between what we think we see and what we know. Everyday people become almost ghostlike—figures who seem to move between the physical and spiritual realms.

Placed alongside photographs created more than a century ago to trick the viewer’s eye, Cattelle’s work raises an intriguing question: How much can we really trust what we see?

And in an AI-generated gallery, that question feels especially relevant.

The “Trick Art” photography featured in the exhibition comes from the “…collection of Christopher Steiner, whose nearly 20,000 vernacular and anonymous photographs explore the curious space between evidence and illusion. A professor of art history and anthropology at Connecticut College, Steiner has assembled a fascinating collection of images that invite viewers to suspend their disbelief.

This selection focuses on the wonderfully strange tradition of “headless” photography. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, photographers experimented with multiple exposures, photomontage, composite printing, and carefully staged scenes to seemingly detach heads from bodies and transform apparent acts of violence into visual jokes. Macabre yet playful, these vintage photographs demonstrate how easily photography’s promise of truth can give way to fantasy, humor, and delightful deception.”

Looking at these photographs today, we can easily recognize the illusions. We understand that the photographers were having a bit of fun—captivating, amusing, and perhaps even frightening their audiences with images that seemed impossible.

But imagine encountering one of these photographs more than a century ago, when photography itself was still relatively new. How convincing—or unsettling—might it have been?

That makes these images particularly fascinating when viewed in an AI-generated gallery today. The technology has changed, but our fascination with manipulating reality has not. Then, as now, artists and image-makers ask us to question what we see—and how much of it we should believe.