Viewing Room | Mat Collishaw. Alluvion V, 2024

"Flowers have those beautiful shapes we love to look at, but the reason behind their beauty is attracting butterflies and other insects for the purpose of disseminating pollen. So, flowers manipulate others with their striking physical appearance. Their beauty therefore exists for solely egoistical reasons in fact, and I find this rather fascinating."

– Mat Collishaw

In his latest — Alluvion — series Mat Collishaw explores the intersection of nature’s evolutionary processes and artificial intelligence, examining how life’s instincts and behaviors can be manipulated. Building on his earlier explorations of the “evolutionary arms race” — the cycle of behaviors driving survival and reproduction — Collishaw focuses on AI’s potential to simulate and accelerate these patterns. His new tapestry works redefine floral forms, hybridizing species and evolving their digital DNA into increasingly complex and imaginative creations.

While technology is central to Alluvion, the series also pays homage to centuries-old craftsmanship. Collishaw harnesses artificial intelligence to generate intricate botanical forms inspired by the Old Masters, then materializes these digital visions through traditional weaving techniques. He employs the jacquard loom—a method refined in the 19th century but rooted in medieval textile traditions—to translate his AI-generated imagery. Notably, the jacquard loom was the first to use punchcard software, producing the earliest ‘digital images’ over 200 years ago. This pioneering system later influenced the development of modern computing, making Collishaw’s choice of medium particularly resonant: his works bridge the origins of digital technology with its latest evolution in AI.

 

Despite its technological foundations, Alluvion also nods to art historical giants such as Hieronymus Bosch, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Salvador Dalí. Collishaw fuses de Heem’s meticulous still lifes, O’Keeffe’s bold abstractions, and Dalí’s surreal dreamscapes to create hybridized, AI-generated flora. The result is a surrealism so seamlessly entwined with reality that the boundary between them dissolves.

Collishaw’s tapestry series draws from the tradition of medieval woven artworks, where depictions of flora carried deep symbolic and spiritual meaning. Flowers, leaves, and vines were not merely decorative but served as allegories of life, renewal, transience, and the passage of time. Meticulously woven, these botanical motifs functioned both as studies of nature and as reflections on humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Collishaw extends this legacy, infusing his approach to color, form, and narrative with the essence of this historical tradition.

With Alluvion, Collishaw reinvents a centuries-old art form for the digital age, masterfully crafting an immersive and thought-provoking body of work that challenges perceptions of authenticity, craftsmanship, and technology’s evolving role in art. By blending AI with the historic jacquard weaving process, he not only reimagines floral and illusionary forms but also questions the very nature of digital creation and its relationship to human artistry.