Automata, latest exhibition by artist Muvindu Binoy opens at Paradise Road Saskia Fernando Gallery

Saturday, 28 December 2024 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Paradise Road Saskia Fernando Gallery (PRSFG) is presenting Automata, the latest exhibition by artist Muvindu Binoy at 41 Horton Place, Colombo 07.

Muvindu Binoy for the last decade has been setting the trend by challenging conventions and adopting technological shifts with bold unhinged creativity. The artist’s negotiation with a seemingly endless repository of digital images and generative AI becomes a testament to the flux created by rapidly expanding fields of information.

Automata unfolds like a fever dream, brimming with tropical abundance where discordant fragments; vintage photographs, strings of text, and assorted memorabilia opens a discourse on identity, gender, and culture with dry humour. The exhibition is a collaboration with a collective consciousness, a journey into the strange and wondrous interplay between free will and the limits of human perception.

The artist uses AI-generated imagery to explore cultural heritage, focusing on the commodification and appropriation of South Asian identity and aesthetics. Keywords like ‘Ceylon’ and ‘Sri Lanka’ are used in the generative process, critiquing the exoticisation of traditional elements such fabrics, language and architecture from the region. By layering and altering the AI-generated images, the artist creates a dynamic tension between restraint and spontaneity. This approach disrupts the boundaries of the generated image, resulting in visually striking works infused with the artist’s unique signature.

In Digital Dreams and Analog Nightmares, Muvindu Binoy constructs a hypnotic visage where layer after layer of random and discordant imagery emerge from the contours of a disembodied head. Saturated with the vibrant equatorial hues of lush greens and vivid reds, the composition overflows with tropical flora and motifs of classical architecture in a compositionally balanced excess. This visual surplus mirrors the overwhelming nature of digital culture itself, where information proliferates unchecked and unregulated.

In the Xe/Xem series, idealised models meet the gaze of the audience with intensity, their expressions partially obscured by ethereal veils. Binoy sensitively examines androgyny and gender presentation, depicting identities that embrace fluidity. The veils have an otherworldly quality as they partially obscure the models generating greater ambiguity and mystique. The image symbolises the layered complexity of selfhood, where identity resists categorisation. This exploration unfolds against the backdrop of a world increasingly defined by internet culture and social media, questioning how these technologies shape the perception of gender and self. The series reflects our evolving understanding of identity.

At the core of Automata is a provocation: a bold confrontation of the dissociation between reality and imagination, inciting deeper reflection on modern society and the illusion of free will. Binoy challenges us to reconsider how technology informs not only our experience of culture but our very understanding of identity and authenticity in an era where both are subject to constant reinterpretation.

Automata by Muvindu Binoy will run until 9 January 2025 at PRSFG, 41 Horton Place, Colombo 07.