Lucia Riffel‘s current installation, a red sun has water in its eye, at The Delaware Contemporary, explores elements of magical thinking, our relationship to nature, and the desire to leave some mark of ourselves in the world. In the darkened room, looped 3D animations play above small handmade sculptures, and on the floor a video is surrounded by a circle of hand prints in dirt, reminiscent of those left behind on cave walls.
About the exhibition from Riffel’s website:
I started seeing raccoons in July. They would tap on my windows at night and tap inside my walls in the morning. Watching me, sleeping in the room next to me, warmed from the waters I showered in through the thin barrier of the tub. I don’t know what they wanted or what they were trying to tell me, but they wanted to tell me something so badly. I loved them, I feared them, they consumed my thoughts for months. I am both terrified and comforted by how thin the membrane between my life and theirs is. After all, we are both just creatures trying to live.
I am interested in the marks we leave on the world and the marks the world leaves on us. Our existence feels so small, layered between an authoritative takeover and ever-growing climate devastation. But I contradict myself, because I find small things to be some of the most magical. We anthropomorphize, we think the raccoons are trying to tell us something (and maybe they are!), we see ourselves in everything, we find meaning in everything. We leave our little marks anywhere we can to signal to the others that we are here, beneath it all. Despite the horrors, we do persist. I often think about someday someone or something seeing our small, mundane, markings of life and knowing “we were here, we were here.”
I made these tiny bits of ephemera to serve as relics of time spent processing, in communion with bits of nature as it exists now, and moments tucked away at the dawn of whatever comes next.
And from The Delaware Contemporary’s website:
“My work leads one to the place between their mind and screen, space and time, thought and feeling, and into the everyday sublime. I create time loops and capsules – distilling the fleeting and immaterial through installations, animations, and horticulture. Themes of pattern and repetition coalesce both in-screen and in real life, allowing one to look through the mirror of the screen and enter a meditative headspace beyond as well as within. Processing cyclical existence, digital ephemerality, and environmental anxiety, my practice utilizes experiential stimuli to awaken interiority – leaving one in a suspended metaphysical twilight zone.”
Giorgio de Chirico, “Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire”,1914, Oil and charcoal on canvas
René Magritte, “The Secret Double”, 1927, Oil on Canvas
Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents a large collection of works, in a variety of mediums, from the artistic movement. The show takes you through Surrealism’s history and is filled with many inventive and imaginative pieces- including several from lesser-known artists.
From the museum about the exhibition-
Surrealism burst onto the scene in Paris in 1924. French writer André Breton announced the aims of this revolutionary literary and artistic movement in his Manifesto of Surrealism. It started with a question: How, ideally, should we live? Breton observed that, at about twenty years of age, we make the error of trading our childlike imaginations for adult good sense and logic. Yet it’s the imagination that allows access to the innate state of freedom that we all possess. And maintaining freedom, Breton proposed, should always be the highest human aspiration.
Surrealism’s ambitions were broad and bold: its adherents wanted nothing less than a revolution in consciousness. To that end, they explored a method of experimental poetry called automatic writing, comparable to spoken free association, done spontaneously and, as far as possible, without conscious intent. Sigmund Freud’s theories about the role of the unconscious and the interpretation of dreams were an important inspiration. The Surrealists looked to access the unconscious mind to break free from the constraining rationality of the modern world.
Visual artists were part of the Surrealist movement from the start. They took up surprising and often challenging subject matter, imagery, and techniques across many mediums: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, book illustration and design, and film. In Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100, we explore how, from the movement’s 1920s beginnings through the 1950s, these trailblazing artists made good on Surrealism’s revolution in consciousness.
The exhibition is split into six categories- Waking Dream which features Surrealism’s beginnings in the 1920s, Natural History, focused on the influence of nature, Desire,Premonition of War,Exiles, and Magic Art, which focuses on the new type of esotericism that emerged within Surrealism in the aftermath of World War II.
Lee Miller’s photographs of natural rock formations
Salvador Dalí, “Aphrodisiac Telephone” 1938, Plastic, metal
From the museum about Aphrodisiac Telephone, one of the artworks in the Desire section–
Salvador Dalí likened the Surrealist object, which uses found items, as a symbolic creation with improbable juxtapositions, comparable to poetry and sexual perversion. He applied this idea in Aphrodisiac Telephone. Its basis is the substitution of a lobster— a real lobster in the sculpture’s first iteration for display in 1938, a factitious lobster in white plastic for the editioned version —for a similarly shaped telephone handset. The title alludes to the lobster’s reputation as an aphrodisiac when eaten.
Max Ernst, “The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism)”, 1937, Oil on canvas
From the museum about the Max Ernst painting above, from the Premonition of War section-
Ernst painted The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism) to protest the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War as well as the defeat of the Republican side. But this depiction of a rampaging bird-headed beast also served as an allegorical reflection on the nature of evil. Ernst exhibited this painting as The Triumph of Surrealism — a despairingly ironic title given the situation in Europe — at the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.
During World War II many European artists escaped to New York City and Mexico. The Exiles section features works by these artists, as well as Mexican (like Roberto Montenegro pictured below) and American artists whose work could also be seen as part of the Surrealist movement.
Roberto Montenegro, “The Double”, 1938, Oil on panel
The last section of the exhibition Magic Art, focuses on the increase in post-war interest in supernatural themes. There was also a room devoted to the work of artist friends Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, who had moved to Mexico during the war.
Leonora Carrington, “And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur”, 1953, Oil on canvas
Remedios Varo, “Creation of the Birds”, 1957, Oil on Masonite
Every month I listen to the majority of bands and musicians who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artist.
This month includes new music from Cate Le Bon, Lindsey Troy of Deap Vally, and Together Pangea; a Duran Duran cover by Storefront Church; and a little more electronic music than usual- including a new song by hyperpop artist Glaive.
LA-based musician and animator Sean Solomon released Shooting Star this past October, and also created the video.
Work by Mel Rosen (sculpture) and Stass Shpanin (mural, video, and paintings)
Detail from Stass Shpanin’s “Dance of Birth” animated video
Ceramic sculptures by Mel Rosen
Paintings by Stass Shpanin
The Delaware Contemporary is currently showing three exhibitions as part of its 2025 Biennial Art + AI programming. This post covers two of them, the third is here.
In an age when reality itself feels unstable—filtered through algorithms, fragmented by digital archives, and refracted through competing narratives—artists are increasingly turning to the tools of fiction and speculation not to obscure the truth, but to question how we construct it. Construct | Disrupt brings together the work of Mel Rosen, Sol Kim, Stass Shpanin, and Mark Burchick, four artists who use artificial intelligence, language, and archival material to explore the porous boundaries between perception, memory, and belief.
Across diverse practices—from ceramics, drawing, and painting to video, installation, and text—these artists engage with AI not as a replacement for the hand, but as a provocateur, a co-conspirator, and a mirror to the human imagination. Rather than seeking resolution or certainty, their works open up space for doubt, complexity, and contradiction.
Together, the artists in Construct | Disrupt invite us to consider how we construct meaning in a world where the archive is no longer fixed and where the image can be endlessly generated. The work of these artists does not offer answers, but rather asks: What do we trust? What do we remember? And how do we decide what is worth believing?
About the two artists pictured above, from the museum-
Stass Shpanin engages history as a space of imaginative reconstruction. Working with visual fragments from American folk traditions and immigrant archives, he uses AI to distort and reconfigure the past, generating speculative images that blend glitch, myth, and memory. His paintings and drawings present broken, layered timelines where visual language is both preserved and interrupted. Rather than restoring a singular truth, Shpanin’s work embraces the possibility of many coexisting histories—ones shaped as much by fantasy as by fact, as much by the digital as the ancestral.
Mel Rosen’s practice draws from archaeology, natural history, and personal memory to create objects and images that feel both ancient and otherworldly. Her use of AI image generation allows her to iterate quickly, mutating prompts based on her own drawings and a mental library of organic and cultural references—from Pompeian frescoes and fossils to barnacles and talismans. The resulting images feed back into her ceramics and drawings, where mythic forms and geometric distortions coexist in a suspended cosmology. Rosen’s work suggests that artifacts—whether material or digital—are always evolving, reshaped by time, environment, and interpretation.
Still from the video “Person Enough” by Sol Kim
Sol Kim (video still above) approaches language as a material form, using words to subtly disrupt social and technological systems. Her works often begin with a textual prompt—an instruction, label, or survey—that gives rise to absurd, humorous, or quietly unsettling performances. In The Cookiest Cookie, cookies are judged and destroyed by AI based on their perceived “cookie-ness,” while in Person Enough?, performers attempt to become more legibly “human” to computer vision systems. Through these gestures, Kim reveals the tensions between human nuance and machine classification, exposing the strange logic that governs our interactions with technology—and with one another.
Mark Burchick Installation
Images from Mark Burchick’s “Felt Presence”
Mark Burchick’s Felt Presence explores the intersection of faith, media, and artificial intelligence through the lens of Catholic mysticism. Drawing on archival photographs from the 1917 “Miracle of the Sun” in Fatima, Portugal, Burchick trains AI models to generate photorealistic images of miracles that were never captured on film. Presented alongside historical documentation and witness testimony, these fabricated scenes invite viewers to question the boundaries between belief, evidence, and visual truth—highlighting the unseen technological, institutional, and spiritual forces that shape our perception of reality.
In NOO Icons, Burchick expands this inquiry through an immersive video installation framed like a reliquary. A five-minute rear-projected loop, trained on over 100 images of stained glass Rose Windows, morphs into abstract color fields via AI animation. At its center is a 3D-printed altar piece generated using DreamFusion, a text-to-3D tool prompted to create a “solar monstrance.” The resulting object—gold-finished, internally lit, and housing Lithium batteries—evokes both the Communion host and a technological relic. As Kate Crawford notes in Atlas of AI, Lithium is a sacred yet finite resource driving modern AI. By encasing it in plastic and low-res form, Burchick critiques the planned obsolescence and ecological cost of our AI-powered age, reframing divine presence through the lens of material decay.
The works covering this exhibition theme approach AI not as a neutral instrument, but as a complex cultural system—one that reflects, amplifies, and at times distorts the values of its makers. Through the intersecting strategies of critique, reimagination, and bias exposure, Danielle Glovin, Stephanie Dinkins, and Leah Modigliani probe the systems—algorithmic, archival, social—that dictate what is preserved, who is recognized, and how knowledge circulates.
Together, these artists ask urgent questions: Who trains the algorithm? Whose histories are encoded, and whose are left out? What does it mean to build an intelligence—and who is it built for? In doing so, they model a critical engagement with AI, one that challenges default narratives, centers marginalized perspectives, and opens up space for new possibilities. Their practices call us to reconsider what it means to know, to remember, and to be recognized in a world increasingly shaped by invisible systems of intelligence.
Stephanie Dinkins’ interactive sculpture “Not The Only One (N’TOO)“
Stephanie Dinkins’ “Conversations with Bina48” (back wall) and Leah Modigliani’s AI generated letters for “Cultural Capital”
From Danielle Glovin’s series “Future Generations”
About the artists’ work pictured above-
Stephanie Dinkins’ Not The Only One (N’TOO) and Conversations with Bina48 extend this inquiry into the realm of relational AI, specifically that of minority groups in the tech sector. In N’TOO, an interactive sculpture gives voice to the oral histories of three generations of Black women, creating an AI entity intentionally designed, trained, and aligned with their values and lived experiences. It is a poignant reversal: instead of AI extracting meaning from biased data sets, Dinkins encodes her AI, reorienting the goals of intelligence design toward inclusivity and equal representation.
In Conversations with Bina48, Dinkins engages in an evolving dialogue with one of the world’s most advanced humanoid robots- probing the limits of kinship, consciousness, and identity. The recorded exchanges navigate tensions between human and machine, emotion and algorithm, intimacy and abstraction—underscoring the urgency of developing AI systems coded to reflect the full richness and diversity of human stories, cultures, and embodied experiences.
Leah Modigliani’s Cultural Capital offers a satirical yet incisive intervention into the circuits of artistic legitimacy. Through a fictional archive of AI-generated letters of recommendation and rejection—authored in the mimicked voices of historical critics and curators—Modigliani reveals how the rhetoric of value and genius in the art world is both constructed and recursively reinforced. The project uses generative tools to lay bare the biases embedded in cultural gatekeeping, drawing attention to the ways AI might amplify inherited hierarchies under the guise of neutrality.
Danielle Glovin’s Future Generations presents AI-generated reinterpretations of inherited family photographs, exposing the mechanics of machine vision and the flattening effects of automated classification. By transposing Midjourney text outputs onto her photographs, Glovin literalizes the collision between personal history and digital taxonomy. The result is a visual language at once familiar and estranged—where nostalgia meets simulation, and memory is rewritten through the aesthetics of machine learning.
This song is from San Diego band Blair Gun‘s 2024 album, There Are No Rival Clones Here. In this interview the band discusses the song and the process of animating the video which uses over 3000 hand-drawn frames.
The band is playing on Friday, 11/28/25, at Oblivion in Los Angeles along with Loophole, Fat Lady Sang, and Manners.
Max Cooper and Aho Ssan- When I Sit Alone. In My Thoughts. I Am Crushed.
This song is from Max Cooper‘s latest album, On Being, released in February of this year. He has released several videos for the songs on the album, each directed by a different artist and based on a quote from a prompt on his website.
The quote arrived on my album website after I asked “What do you want to express, which you feel you can’t in everyday life?”. Using thousands of anonymous quotes, my On Being album attempts to capture the experience of being human, now.
This was one of the first quotes from the database that reached out and grabbed my guts and squashed them. I had to tackle it, and I immediately contacted Aho Ssan with the idea, because his approach to music contained some of the intensity and noise elements that I felt were needed to deliver the quote.
It was submitted anonymously, so over the past few years I had a story in my mind about who submitted it and why. But then ahead of the Bristol show I heard from Robbie Evans, the writer of the words, who I met at the show. If any of you submitted any of the words in the project I’d love to hear from you so I can put a face to the name of the words I’ve spent my last 3 years with.
The writing process began with a live improvisation on Void and Vista Folds, which formed the structure of the 7 minute sequence. I then jammed with my hardware synths and pedals to introduce the aggression, and sent everything to Aho Ssan, who mangled and layered on his special blend.
The final touches came from a visit to Taichung, where recordings of the night market feature in the track, and finally, over compression to pump a sub bass into obliterating everything else to reach for some new chaos, for any you who have the full frequency response available. It was pure catharsis, and maybe not something many people will enjoy listening to, but that’s where the quote sent me, and hopefully it will be worthwhile for some of you.
3D/AV, Max Cooper’s live immersive audio-visual experience, is currently on tour and will be at The Belasco in Los Angeles on Saturday, 8/30/25.
The game begins with a truck driver named Conway arriving at a highway gas station with his dog. He is having trouble finding the address he was given for his delivery. From there you travel with him over various roads, an underground highway, and eventually even by boat. Along the way you stop at museums, an abandoned mine, local bars, an odd office building, a cave filled with bats, and more while meeting several of the area’s residents. You can choose to learn more about the characters and often join them to explore locations. The story unfolds with no sense of urgency and you are often given the choice to move on or to stay and explore further.
Filled with magical realist elements, it is often a world that can still feel depressingly familiar. Most of the characters are struggling in some way with the effects a failing economy, something that feels even more relevant since 2020. But there are also glimmers of hope in the ways the characters show up for each other- adapting, creating, and forming communities.
Below are a few selections from the game’s interludes that provide engaging breaks from the main story.
Scenes from The Entertainment– a play directed by one of the characters-
One of the phones from Here and There Along The Echo– you dial the number and the character Will (played by musician Will Oldham) reads information from the Echo River’s Bureau of Secret Tourism.
Scenes from Un Pueblo De Nada take place at the public access station- you can also find a live action version here.
Kentucky Route Zero is a game that stays with you long after it finishes. There are lots of things to discover and it’s worth playing more than once to find them. The website Highway Zero is good for things you may have missed.
The game is available for purchase on their website and can also currently be found on Netflix.
Below are a selection of works from the artists and their statements about their work.
Moones Zeydabadi
Moones Zeydabadi
I make drawings and paintings depicting human and nonhuman figures in scenes of intimate encounter with each other and their environments. These narratives draw from deeply personal experiences which embody a more universal experience of being. I weave together fragments of recollection, imagined environments, and symbolic gestures to visually represent the complexity of identity and the way it shifts and fractures into new territories as one journeys through life.
My practice explores the liminal territory in which identity, memory and legacy seep through our collective subconsciousness. Through my interest in casting light on overlooked or forgotten stories, I infuse them with living qualities and complex non-linear narrative paths, I model a new, broader, and alternative space of belonging.
Foreground sculptures by Priya Dave
Detail from the interior of one sculpture by Priya Dave
Priya Dave
As an Indian, my art spectrum seeks to disrupt the cycle of disempowerment by integrating self-studied neuroscience research to explore the microbiology of the mind affected by culturally restrictive and arbitrary rules. The societal norms often resulted in mental health challenges, including depression and self-doubt, which left many struggling to trust their judgment or make decisions. Through my work, I strive to create immersive environments that map the brain’s physiological structure, fostering public engagement and raising awareness about mental health through a scientific and artistic lens.
My artistic practice encompasses various mediums, including painting, drawing, printmaking, immersive and video installations, and multi-sensorial experiences. Drawing from my Indian heritage, l often incorporate culturally and historically significant materials like kumkum, fabrics, and spices. These elements are deeply rooted in tradition and carry themes of memory, and identity. By transforming these materials into multisensory artworks, I reimagine their traditional meanings and bring them into contemporary conversations.
Through this fusion of culture and neuroscience, I create spaces that stimulate multiple senses, including sight, touch, sound, smell, and proprioception, encouraging deeper introspection. My work seeks to bridge the gap between personal experience and universal understanding, addressing the amalgamation of mental health, identity, and sensory perception. It is a reflection of my commitment to exploring how art can transcend cultural boundaries and inspire meaningful connections while fostering mental well- being and self-awareness.
Paintings by Abigail Dudley
Abigail Dudley
My paintings celebrate the singularity of perception and the way it entangles how one perceives the world. I am captivated by the slow build-up of forms and the subtle shifts in color that allow me to infuse a soft atmosphere of memory and temporal transitions into my paintings. My work is connected by my search for meaningful encounters with my surroundings through the act of painting, and a search to find surprising moments in life and painting.
My work focuses on the visual slippage between personal narrative and creating a space between harmony and contradictions of visual elements. Through this process, I tie together a space through intimate moments of perception. I aim to cultivate the idea of what it means to linger within a place and how that response can translate into a painting to act as a form of resistance to fast-looking in a culture that values a fast pace of life.
Work by Mikhail Shulga
Mikhail Shulga
My introspective nature is rooted in my identity as a Russian. Long winters and limited sunlight compel us to seek solace indoors, fostering a culture of deep spiritualism and reflection. Over generations, resilience has emerged from the hardships, shifting political regimes, and wars that define our history, further shaping this introspective tradition.
In my installations, I repurpose discarded electronics – objects imbued with nostalgia and unrealized promise. Once luxurious and cutting-edge, these items now lie abandoned on sidewalks. Many come from the ’90s and ’00s, my childhood years, when such technology symbolized hope for a better future. But that promise feels unfulfilled. While our lives have become more convenient, we are left grappling with existential questions: How does technology impact our sense of self and the meaning of human existence? Does the rapid advancement of technology amplify or diminish alienation, freedom, and authenticity? How do virtual spaces, social media, and digital communication shape our perceptions of reality, relationships, and identity? Perhaps the answers lie not in outside but in our own reflections. – “We don’t know what to do with other worlds. We don’t need other worlds. We need a mirror.” Tarkovsky, A. (Director). (1972), Solaris [Film].
Work by Emmanuel Aboagye
Emmanuel Aboagye
My work uses the language of painting to explore ideas of visibility and invisibility as it relates to issues of identity, memory and belonging in a post-colonial context. I explore the complexities of identity, be it class, race and nationality. I give agency to memory not as a tool to investigate the past but a medium for evaluation in the present. I investigate the nuances and specificity of the idea of belonging.
Having been trained as a painter, I employ modern sensibilities in engaging the materials I work with, utilizing them as a lens to examine notions of liberation. I work with materials like, acrylic paint, oil paint, brush, linen, canvas, sequence, wrappers, frost sheet, junk mail flyers, patterned plastic bags and electric iron. I consider the histories and attitude of the materials I work with. They are not merely tools but collaborators in an emancipatory process.
I lean on improvisation as a radical approach for self-liberation in my practice. This allows for spontaneity, fluidity, and the unexpected, reflecting my commitment to embracing uncertainty and possibility.
Paintings by Arend Neyhouse
Arend Neyhouse
My work weaves historical notions of art into the tapestry of our contemporary world. Specifically, while dealing with elements of myth and fable, I tell stories in the space of suburban America. As a consumer of fiction, and spending the majority of my life in suburbia, I explore the synthesis of these elements. My work exists at the crossroads of fable and familiar.
With my figurative paintings, I continue to explore realist arts position in the contemporary art world. I think that through the exploration of the mundane parts of our daily lives lies a time capsule for posterity – a captivating exploration of quietude transformed into an everlasting narrative.
My images exist in the in between. Moments before or after a great change. I am not trying to tell the whole story, but merely a single page, or even a single line; leaving whole worlds both before and after each image. A testament to the sense of sonder as the world churns around us.
Creating epic scenes through my technical approach and unwavering craftsmanship; humanity is laid bare. Through my art, I aspire to create not just paintings, but windows into the soul of our shared existence.
Head to the next page to see more of the artists from the show.
