There are future dates for this event.
Paintings at the Edge of the Artificial Intelligence Era by Phillip Hanson
These are mixed media paintings, not abstractions in the traditional sense. The word abstract comes from the Latin Abstrahere, to draw away from something, and these works don't draw away from a prior subject so much as build one directly on the surface. Many are the result of accretion, built up in layers and stages over long stretches of time rather than arrived at in a single gesture. They share a closeness with Abstract Expressionism in their physicality and process, but not in its emotive charge. The mark-making here isn't gestural release so much as residue, the byproduct of slow, stepwise accumulation where meaning surfaces only in retrospect rather than being expressed in the moment.
They carry a sentimentality toward physicality, paint, and surface that stands in direct contrast to the ubiquitous black screen of the cell phone and the instantaneousness of mass-produced imagery. Against a mode of image making that is immediate, weightless, and endlessly reproducible, these works insist on slowness, touch, and material accretion.
At the same time, they sit at the edge of the artificial intelligence era in a different sense, not as opposition but as common ground. Some predate any direct AI influence. None are illustrations of it. What carries through is an associative logic these works share with the way large language models move between concepts, not by argument, but by resonance and proximity, recognized here as a kinship between human and machine cognition rather than a conflict between them.
The exhibition will be on display now through November 16, 2026 at the Andersen Enrichment Center, located across from Ojibway Island in Saginaw. The gallery is open to the public Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
120 Ezra Rust Drive Saginaw, Michigan 48601
120 Ezra Rust Drive
Saginaw,
Michigan
48601
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