I See You

We live in a time where AI-generated images are becoming increasingly present—eerily realistic, yet fundamentally synthetic. One of the questions that fascinates me is: can artificial intelligence create images of people that feel so lifelike, that they can stir a strong emotion, empathy or even connection?

This collection explores that space—where the artificial brushes against the emotional. The portraits in I See You are not of real people. They are hallucinations of neural networks, assembled from vast datasets and shaped by algorithms. But when the image comes together, it becomes hard not to feel something human looking back at you.

The lines that make up these works are also a metaphor for how AI functions. Up close, they seem chaotic—individual strokes and vectors with no obvious meaning. If you were to trace the logic of the algorithm step by step, you might be able to follow it. But you won't understand how it all fits together until you zoom out completely.  Only then, all the pieces fall into place and a larger pattern emerges.  Just like how meaning emerges from artificial intelligence systems.

Each piece begins digitally. I use AI to generate hyperrealistic portraits of people who don’t exist, based on written prompts. These are then passed through my own generative code, which translates the image into dense networks of lines and curves. Even when I use the same base portrait, the resulting composition is always different. 

The drawing is then engraved into black wood using my self-built laser cutter. But black on black is subtle—almost invisible. To bring the portrait to life, I hand-apply oil paint made from linseed oil and pigment powders into the engraved lines. The result is a richly textured relief that feels somewhere between a stone engraving and a digital fossil.

I See You is about perception, connection, and the blurred boundary between artificial and authentic. It invites you to come close, feel lost in the detail—and then step back, and feel something looking back at you.