The Individual Below—Visual Distillates of the Human Body

Alexander Kadow, 2021

X-ray images that constitute the operating units of the training material of an artificial intelligence (AI) application are the starting point of Alexander Kadow’s series The Individual Below. The images that are subsequently created using the AI application transform the exposures that were originally connected to the physical existence of individuals into digital data sets, making it difficult to find any references to their origins. The transfer of media and the resulting algorithmic processing create visual distillates that are reminiscent of the experimental photograms of painter, typographer, and photographer László Maholy-Nagy (1895–1946) in the 1920s. Kadow creates enigmatic black-and-white compositions that oscillate between abstraction and disconcerting physicality, between depth and surface, and between softness and clear-cut contours.