Gabbriette Is AI-Artist Bernardo Martins' First-Ever Muse
Berlin-based artist Bernardo Martins, known online as @figa.link, has mastered this uneasy balance. Like the bizarre image of Wintour, his work leaves you questioning what’s real and what’s imagined. Martins uses AI to create haunting images that toe the line between the beautiful and the grotesque. Often returning to discomfort as his starting point, AI-image-making has enabled Martins to channel and more easily express his feelings, like the “deep melancholy he’s felt since entering adulthood." This raw, emotional honesty explains why his work resonates with so many. His distorted, otherworldly visuals communicate feelings and experiences that many struggle to articulate.
A few months ago, model and phenom Gabbriette reached out to Martins about working together, drawn to his "ENCOSTO" series, which he previously developed for the Arti_fiċial Pėrspėctivės exhibition curated by Nate Mohler at Los Angeles Center Studios. In Brazilian culture, "Encosto" refers to spirits that attach themselves to the living, influencing and altering their behavior or state of being. Drawing on this belief, Gabbriette’s appearance is both metaphorically and literally distorted — possessed and warped by metal spikes, chains, and claws.
Previously, all of Martins' models have been imaginary. Working with an actual subject for the first time presented a new challenge. It took about three months of collaboration to bring Gabbriette's likeness to the images. “I don't have a strict process I follow; the technology has developed so much and so fast that I constantly adapt to expand and improve the possibilities,” he explains. Usually, Martins spends about a week or so to get a good grip on what works and what doesn't, "but the possibilities of AI are so many that I try to keep everything connected to build a cohesive and complete world in expansion.”
The implications of AI-generated content have been divisive, raising questions about creativity, authorship and originality. Some wonder whether AI art can truly be considered real art. But perhaps the better question is: What is art, anyway? If the purpose of art is to make you feel, then Martins accomplishes just that. The ability for an artist to use AI image-making to bridge reality with our inner worlds is no different from a poet writing in stream of consciousness or a painter recalling their latest dream.
On that note, if AI-Gabbriette or mini-skirted, tommy gun-wielding Anna Wintour show up in your dreams tonight, I'm sorry.
View "ENCOSTO" below.