The Extrapolation of Saint Matthias (after Rubens)

Oil on linen

100 x 75 cm

2023

Matthias is one of the Apostles about whom virtually no information exists. Rubens completely invented his appearance based on the expectations of his time and his ideas of what he could achieve in his painting. We talk a lot about AI-generated art and the dark side of technology, but it should be recognized that extrapolation from incomplete data has a long tradition. My Matthias is no longer a single person but an overlapping group, each figure identical but differentiated by their juxtaposition and changed by the loss of their singularity.