• “While other artists use paint or a camera, we use AI algorithms.
    This is our working tool.” – Obvious

    Danysz Paris-Marais is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Obvious, the French trio of artists and researchers behind the major auction sale of the first work of art using artificial intelligence by the renowned Christie's in 2018. The creatives who have marked an eminent turning point in the history of art market and who were named in 2020 among the "30 Under 30" by Forbes, which described them as "geniuses", dive us into the world of GANism, unveiling their brand new series composed of oil paintings on canvas along with NFT artworks from December 3, 2022 to January 14, 2023.

  • A contemporary journey into the Ancient World
    Obvious, Hanging Gardens of Babylon 1.1, 2022 - Oil on canvas - 100 x 100 cm

    A contemporary journey into the Ancient World

    Dedicated to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, this new series by Obvious, first exclusively revealed at the British Museum on November 23, 2022, is the result of a long research work that led them to collaborate with historians in order to seek out and identify any references to the Seven Wonders in historical texts written by geographers, historians and writers. Today, it is a contemporary journey to the heart of the Ancient World that the young creatives are offering us.
     

    "Our work is a demonstration that algorithms can also help us complete our understanding of how we function as humans, and push us to outsmart our current level of creativity. As a matter of fact, working on the mathematical replication of the processes that happen in our brain provides a new path towards understanding its mechanics."
    - Obvious

  • "We, Obvious, explore, use and share the different ways machine learning algorithms can empower our natural creativity. The notion of creativity is extremely hard to encapsulate, as it seems to be a process implying a number of factors which are not yet properly defined."
    - Obvious

  • 7.1 BY OBVIOUS
    Obvious, Great Pyramid of Giza 1.1, 2022 - Oil on canvas - 100 x 100 cm

    7.1 BY OBVIOUS

    Who has never heard of the Seven Wonders of the World? Even today, the mere mention of them is sufficient to arouse the imagination and bring back distant memories. And yet, few people manage to list them all or to describe them accurately. For good reason: even if their existence is attested by numerous testimonies and descriptions, their aspect remains a subject of debate. With the exception of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, none of them has survived the passing of time.
     

    And this is not the least of the paradoxes: considered as the most extraordinary architectural achievements of the ancient world, these wonders continue to haunt our collective unconscious even though our level of knowledge is only partial and approximate. We are familiar with them without really knowing them. This is precisely what makes them all the more fascinating and a fertile ground that has fostered the imagination of many artists and illustrators.

    • Obvious Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 125 x 80 cm 49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Obvious
      Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      125 x 80 cm
      49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Enquire
    • Obvious Statue of Zeus at Olympia 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 125 x 80 cm 49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Obvious
      Statue of Zeus at Olympia 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      125 x 80 cm
      49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Enquire
    • Obvious Colossus of Rhodes 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 125 x 80 cm 49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Obvious
      Colossus of Rhodes 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      125 x 80 cm
      49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Enquire
    • Obvious Great Pyramid of Giza 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Obvious
      Great Pyramid of Giza 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      100 x 100 cm
      39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Enquire
  • "Through the replication of human behavior in a creative context, we see algorithms as a fascinating tool to dig into and better understand the different forces at stake in the process of creating something new, unique and innovative."
    - Obvious

  • A New Era of Creativity

    Where their predecessors used brushes, charcoal, hammers or chisels, Obvious shapes their works using computer tools that they adapt to their research object. Their work thus develops in a dialogue with algorithms before ultimately leading to plastic creations. A change of era and tools. And of language too. If some people saw in Esperanto the opportunity to reach a universal language, the revolution came from the Internet and the development of search tools that helped to define its structure.
     
    Mankind has consequently developed a new language, that of requests to algorithms which analyze gigantic text and image databases. An emerging language that more and more people are mastering unconsciously. With the development of new creation tools based on this language, a field of experimentation is opening up for artists wishing to appropriate these new technologies and interact with them. Due to the nature of machine learning, artificial intelligence is not fully perfect and the results are not absolutely accurate in all cases. It is therefore interesting for artists to play with these margins of uncertainty and to propose diverted applications of the algorithms that go beyond the simple request among existing data.
    • Obvious Lighthouse of Alexandria 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 125 x 80 cm 49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Obvious
      Lighthouse of Alexandria 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      125 x 80 cm
      49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Enquire
    • Obvious Temple of Artemis at Ephesus 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 80 x 125 cm 31 1/2 x 49 1/4 in
      Obvious
      Temple of Artemis at Ephesus 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      80 x 125 cm
      31 1/2 x 49 1/4 in
      Enquire
    • Obvious Hanging Gardens of Babylon 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Obvious
      Hanging Gardens of Babylon 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      100 x 100 cm
      39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Enquire
    • Obvious Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 1.1, 2022 Oil on canvas 125 x 80 cm 49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Obvious
      Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 1.1, 2022
      Oil on canvas
      125 x 80 cm
      49 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
      Enquire
  • NEW WAYS TO ADDRESS NEW CHALLENGES
    Obvious, Statue of Zeus at Olympia 1.1, 2022 - Oil on canvas - 125 x 80 cm

    NEW WAYS TO ADDRESS NEW CHALLENGES

    Obvious explores this new language, in a recurring dialogue with the machine through the creation of multiple scripts to generate images and guide the process in the chosen direction. Each of the works is therefore the outcome of a process of back and forth and interaction with algorithms whose generative capacities result from complex numerical calculations. There is no self-conscious creativity here, despite what the term "artificial intelligence" might suggest.
     
    The author is not the artificial intelligence but the artists who use it as a tool at the service of their creative process. Through “7.1 by Obvious” Danysz gallery invites us to discover the work by the French collective, which is the result of their many conversations with algorithms, a work of iteration, selection and production in an effort to reinterpret a classic subject in art history.


  • AI as a tool for Obvious’ artistic process
    Obvious, Colossus of Rhodes 1.1, 2022 - Oil on canvas - 125 x 80 cm

    AI as a tool for Obvious’ artistic process

    Obvious uses a wide set of algorithmic tools, allowing the treatment and transformation of images and videos in unprecedented ways. They work with style transfer, image enhancement, deepfake, incrustation, 3D modeling and many other tools being currently developed in research. By combining these algorithms, they aim at creating a visual and conceptual artistic proposition like no other, and to display the possibilities offered by the fast rhythmed discoveries in the field of machine learning.
     
    The works arising from this creative process find themselves at the crossroads of science, history and art. After having revisited Japanese prints, African masks and classical portraits with their well-known series "The family of Belamy” in their previous works, Obvious have decided to use traditional oil on canvas for their new series, a technique that gives them the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with the classical artists who preceded them in the treatment of this theme, while also preserving certain visual incongruities resulting from their exploration of the man-machine creation language.
  • "By staying up to date with the latest research and finding artistic applications to the tools being discovered, we also bring knowledge and future perspective to the world, by reducing the gap between research and applications. Science and art have always been complementary."
    - Obvious
  • Obvious is a French collective of artists and researchers composed of Hugo Caselles-Dupré (1993), Pierre Fautrel (1993) and Gauthier Vernier...
    Obvious is a French collective of artists and researchers composed of Hugo Caselles-Dupré (1993), Pierre Fautrel (1993) and Gauthier Vernier (1993). Their work has been presented in numerous institutions: National Art Museum of China (Beijing, 2019), King Fahd Cultural Centre (Ryad, 2019), Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg, 2019), Haus der Kunst (Munich, 2020), Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (Paris, 2021), Rencontres d'Arles (Arles, 2022) or K11 Art Museum (Hong Kong, 2022). Their works are present in many private collections. They live and work in Paris.
     

  • Stay tuned for more

    If you wish to be informed privately of Obvious new projects and art in advance, please email us
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