Sydney, 2024

Seeing is Believing

Station Gallery Australia, Sydney, July 6 - August 3

The title of this exhibition refers to the proverb which accepts truth as a value. This commonly held conviction – that seeing is believing – is becoming less reliable through the proliferation of new technologies. The recent developments of Artificial Intelligence (AI) expose the naivety in our judgements. AI, once an inaccessible prototype riddled with errors, has now become a ubiquitous technology that rivals human output. Michael Staniak’s practice is concerned with the impact of new technologies on traditional methods of creating art. He explores the changing dynamics of images and materiality as influenced by digital media, provoking the tension between viewing content on a screen versus how they appear in person. Seeing is Believing is a continuation of Staniak’s investigation of material, technique, and form.

This series of bright and iridescent, shifting textural paintings disorientate the viewer. These paintings feature unpredictable movement, creating the illusion of depth and undulating compositions that are seemingly flattened by the mirage of a screen. Furthering his process-based practice, Staniak incorporates sound and video into this investigation. Through a combination of hand and digital manipulation, he creates antiquated signals which test the idea of AI’s immateriality. Seeing is Believing confronts the perception of reality in the digital age, questioning the reliability of what and how we see.