DEEPTRUTH

Painting, in its essence, is presence. Duality persists and has always existed. Either this or that. Free will. There is something at this moment, in this Era, that cruelly underlines and reinforces the very duality that had seemed impossible to reinforce.

Metadata are the result of emotions transformed into data, recombined by neural networks that calculate probabilities. If the data are authored by the artist, this will be a new medium for creativity and construction. Authorship remains and is enhanced.

But there is a universe of non-authorship, where the digital image we see is not the image that exists, or one that is the product of real labour. Is it AI, or is it someone knocking softly? This is the challenge, the vitality that has been taken from art. The digital has stripped photography, architecture, design, music, the voice, cinema, writing and sculpture of authenticity. The physical body is replaced without anyone noticing, because the medium, mp3 or mp4, does not present itself properly. Thought, attention, subtlety and passion are lost the moment the human being ceases to Be and the non-object becomes an object through repetition and automatism.

Deepfake may well be one of today’s greatest truths, so deep is it. Disinformation, moments that do not exist begin to “exist”, calmly, stealthily, because inertia in the demand for the real has taken its place on the podium. There is a new illusion. A visible atmosphere that disregards the vital. Perception now has just one layer, that of the screen. It generates pixels that the mind, which lies, does not classify as unreal, and it consumes the little squares just as people once began to consume dots. Now it is non-physical digital impressions that feed us daily. Andy Warhol opened that door to digital reality, printed countless times, where the banal was turned into a work of art. “The 15 minutes of fame” are now multiples of three, five times faster, because time is different now and fame has gone viral like a virus that infects exponentially.

But in Warhol there was human life in that thinking, in the creative impulse, in the real instinct that tested the limits of courage, freedom and detachment. There was a physical body subordinated to the ascent into an unknown space. A body that could fail, a mind that could collapse. Thought. There was thought. A visionary who changed the way Art was perceived and who would be thrilled by this new digital era.

Meanwhile, everything has changed, painting has not. Centuries of its body’s unchanging persistence.

Forged works, in an existence where the copy, however faithful it may be, has no value. Authenticity, authorship and physicality are irreplaceable. It is very powerful to observe that presence, so distinctly its own.

Painting, the last non-object standing. Unshakeable. There is a biometric signature in the work, in painting, that is impossible to reproduce. It is proof of human life. There is no line of code that can transform itself into the line born at the tip of a paintbrush. Indecipherable nuances that manifest themselves according to the human being who wields it. Painting, in its essence, is not persistent, it is.

A New Era is unfolding. A colossal mutation. A new concept, a new consciousness must be conceived, History of Human Art. It is urgent. It is Humanity extending itself. It is a legacy immortalised in time and space.

Susana Chasse  

October 2026