AVERY SINGER

Influenced by Jean Baudrillard’s writings on the Gulf War, the exhibition considers how conflict in the West isprimarily experienced as a media spectacle, constructed and construed through images rather than directencounters. This dissonance is heightened by the seemingly disparate nature of the casino setting, completewith long red curtains, tiled carpet and staged CCTV cameras, and the unsettling content of Singer’s paintings.Throughout the works, Singer’s Poker Player motif recurs as a central figure: a stand-in for the artist whonavigates risk by reading patterns, anticipating outcomes and perceiving what others overlook. This figure isoverlaid with a mosaic of AI-influenced imagery drawn from images of contemporary warfare, bringing intofocus the harsh realities that persist beyond the studio – or casino – yet are easily ignored in everyday life.

Singer’s use of AI to develop the prompts and keywords that initiate aspects of the image generation processfurther implicates themes of memory, truth and knowledge, underlining the paradoxes of the digital era. Theresulting images are characterized by what Singer terms an ‘AI slop aesthetic,’ revealing uncanny distortionsthat underscore the limits of algorithmic systems (for example, in the work ‘Solver’ (2026), a U.S. marine isdepicted wearing a keffiyeh).

Working initially in ComfyUI, the artist develops custom LoRAs trained on individuals to create a base character.These subjects are further refined before becoming the painting’s central figure. The tiled imagery acrossthe surface comes from training AI models to mash together specific imagery with AI slop aesthetics: war fetishization, LAN parties and other aspects of real world, digital culture, alongside semi-autobiographicalsubject matter. As Singer states on the final outcome, ‘I thought it would be interesting if the viewers could lookat the paintings and recognize an AI system that was malfunctioning. Maybe there’s poetry to be found in thebreakdown of this highly developed technology:’

‘Strong uncanny valley feeling throughout. Unsettling artificial humanity, collapsed identities, syntheticmemory fragments, psychological collage of historical trauma and chaos. Appears generated by abroken AI system trained on corrupted military archives, damaged war photography databases, lowresolution sources, and misaligned facial data. Full AI slop—unsettling, almost real, deeply wrong.

The mosaic tiles clip through her skin and clothing. They float at inconsistent depths across her face,and torso. They overlap incorrectly with no regard for her anatomy. U.S. soldiers, militants, battlefieldscenes, and distorted faces recur chaotically throughout the overlay.

The system does not attempt reconciliation. There is no blending between the sharp, well-lit casinobroadcast and the corrupted war documentation mosaic. No narrative explanation. No aestheticharmonization. The failure is categorical: a clean poker tournament frame has been contaminated withan entirely wrong, deeply broken photographic archive.

The sharp focused well lit background is filled with spectators/audience like in a poker tournament,completely untouched by the overlay corruption.’

Courtesy Hauser & Wirth.