MOMA ACQUIRES REFIK ANADOL’S AI-POWERED UNSUPERVISED
Refik Anadol’s generative artwork Unsupervised—Machine Hallucinations—MoMA, 2022, on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art since late last year, will become the institution’s permanent property, thanks to a joint gift by tech entrepreneur and digital art collector Ryan Zurrer, through his 1OF1 Collection, and the RFC Collection, led by Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile and Desiree Casoni. Anadol’s piece uses machine learning and rendering software to assimilate the institution’s collection data and generate, on a massive LED screen, a digital, evolving image of the artworks. Unsupervised has divided critics and audiences alike. New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz brusquely dismissed the work as a “crowd-pleasing, like-generating mediocrity,” while Lloyd Wise, writing in Artforum, described it as “spellbinding. Familiar motifs from the modernist tradition effloresce, hybridize, and vanish: A blossoming of Fauvist color transforms into allover patterning; a biomechanical shape attenuates into graphic registrations on a printed page; a loose grid melts into Cubist planes.”
The Istanbul–born, Los Angeles–based Anadol is known for his immersive large-scale AI-driven installations characterized by an abstract, dreamlike quality and that often address climate change in tropic and arctic zones. That these inhabit corporate and commercial spaces as frequently as they do galleries and institutions may in part explain the critical discord that attends his oeuvre. Among his recent works are commissions for New York for-profit exhibition concern Artechouse, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and luxury brand Bulgari. As well, Anadol has participated in the Istanbul Biennial; Melbourne, Australia’s NGV Triennial; and Venice’s Architecture Biennial. In 2016, he became Google’s inaugural artist-in-residence.
Rodriguez-Fraile in a statement expressed the donors’ “sincere gratitude to MoMA for their collaboration in showcasing Refik Anadol’s groundbreaking work to a global audience.” Rodriguez-Fraile noted that they were “thrilled” that Anadaol’s work had found a permanent home at MoMA. “This endeavor has served as a magnificent bridge between traditional and digital mediums,” he wrote, “greatly impacting the broader art community, igniting invaluable discussions, and inspiring artists around the world.”
