Jean-Jacques Balzac

Known for his hauntingly unreal architectures, the artist Jean-Jacques Balzac, whose pseudonym defines the very essence of his work by condensing two monuments of French literature, has set up a generative creative system based on the potential of Artificial Intelligence.

lives and works in Paris (FR)

The invasion of new so-called intelligent technologies is exposing us daily to alternative perspectives on the material and immaterial world. Based on this observation, the architect by profession has combined his know-how with AI to create ‘Wrong architecture illustration’, with a seductive aesthetic often tinged with melancholy, which encourages us to question our perception of images by challenging our own lucidity.

Thanks to Jean-Jacques Balzac’s approach, the aesthetic potential of the image is exploited as a rational illusion, meaning that it is seen as probably real but not quite, with lines and shapes that seem familiar. The result is indefinable images, close to science fiction, sometimes post-apocalyptic, fantastical and enigmatic architectures, often devoid of any functionality, with an unsettling beauty that is both distant and close at the same time. For the artist integrates the very notion of imperfection into the implacable scheme of a new, seemingly limitless technology.

For Sinople, Jean-Jacques Balzac temporarily abandons monumental architecture and wide-open spaces for a series of intimate, surrealist, strangely contemporary still lifes, whose tonalities and compositions evoke classical painting, particularly Flemish.

Artworks