Front cover of artist's book, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Laser cut artist insert in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Laser cut artist insert in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior magazine cover in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
PInterior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Interior spread in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Intetrior magazine back cover and first page of essay by T'ai Smith in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Colophon in V XXXX, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
Back cover of artist's book, 10 x 12 1/2 in hardbound. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography.
V XXXX
(2023)
Hardbound in red linen with matte black stamp and silkscreen on cover, 512 archival color artworks printed on 70lb glossy paper with a 2-page laser cut artist’s insert and a 9-page essay printed on 70lb uncoated French Paper Construction.
10 x 12 1/2 in
2023
Edition of 8
V XXXX is a limited edition artist’s book in the form of a magazine, which Amber Frid-Jimenez created in conversation with a series of generative adversarial networks, or GANs. The artist began by training a machine on a particular visual data set: 130 thousand images—representing seventy years of monthly magazine spreads, from 1950 to 2020—scraped from a globally-recognized fashion periodical; reading these patterns and trends, the machine responded, like a child learning the sounds of a new language, by mimicking the contours of its model. Like the parent-magazine, it produced image-after-image, version-after-version. V is familiar in colour, texture, and weight—glossy and reflective—but it is also strange, alien. The forms that grace each spread look vaguely corporeal, but have arms like toothpicks, bodies like blobs. Sartorial patterns are isolated and seemingly reinterpreted as Rorschach inkblots—perhaps a cicada, or a bird. What appear to be columns and rows of text resemble delicate trails of smoke nested among other creatures. The hint of human forms are mangled to abstraction, or abstracted to Otherness.
– Excerpt from “AI’s Fashion Mirror Stage” by T’ai Smith
V XXXX includes a laser cut artist’s insert and an essay by T’ai Smith entitled “AI’s Fashion Mirror Stage.” This artist’s book was first shown at Mónica Reyes Gallery as the centerpiece of V XXXX – something slips, passes, is transmitted, from stage to stage, an exhibition of works by Amber Frid-Jimenez, curated by T’ai Smith from May 11 to June 10, 2023.