¹Iconoclastia, italian for Iconoclasm︎︎︎ refers to the social belief in the importance of the destruction of icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons.

² The different versions of the original images in the various volumes I consider as instances of a phenomenological cycle. The notion of such a cycle first appeared in my work Ocean of Darkness, as can be read in it’s voice over text︎︎︎.

³Transfiguration︎︎︎ means a) change in form or appearance: metamorphosis, b) an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.^.

4 Similarities between images among different volumes:

An overview of all pages of Volume 1:

Michelangelo Iconoclastia

The Michelangelo Iconoclastia publication series (2023-2024) consists of facsimile reproductions of an old tourist book on the work of the famous Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarotti, in which the visual reproductions are altered with the aid of AI. The series consists of a growing number of volumes, each dedicated to a different material, style or figurative motif with which pieces of art can be made.
Volume 1 – the first that has been released – came to life as the continuation of the abstraction and ‘liquification’ of visual representations of sculptures as first occuring in the project Skulptura. It showcases a variety of polished marble structures.

When looked at these books on their own, the interplay between the titles and text referring to the original works of art and the visual offspring of their depictions comes to the forefront (as can be seen in the overview of pages of Volume 1 on this page).
But when considering the appearances of each image across the different volumes, families of images imbued by their shared visual origin take stage, like instances of a transfigurational source.

To me, the project not merely expresses the myriad of possibilities of AI Image generating as a tool, but more importantly hints at AI as metaphor, or even the embodiment of a possible underlying structure of spiritual experiences.