CODEX ROBOTICUS | gabrieldfq

ROBOT SERIES

“Robot” celebrated 100 years in January 1921. The term was first heard at the premiere of a dystopian play where machine slaves took on hard tedious work. Author Karel Čapek called them robots, borrowing from the West Slavic word robota, self-labour. But the idea of using artificial creatures as assistants goes back much, much further in the past and has inspired the imagination of many great thinkers from Aristotle to da Vinci to Goethe. The foundations of this success story brimming with innovations were laid as far back as 3,000 years ago

Aristotle (384–322 BC), believed that automatons could put an end to slavery: “There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work.”

In this work, Gabriel brings a reflexion about the urge of humans to create an artificial likeness (or betterness) of themselves for the purpose of performing useful work. From Gabriel’s perspective, robots only exist because Homo sapiens, by nature, loves entertainment and has an aversion to work. Or, to put it in a more positive light strives to maximize efficiency.

FAMILY PORTRAIT

2021 - Acrylic & chalk paint on acid free board | 60 x 10 cm

In his work, Gabriel envisages maximized efficiency at the service of our pleasure bringing us closer to the singularity point, and questions what the Humanity purpose would become at this moment?

From the artist point of view, the raise of the artificial intelligence overtaking the human mind and spirit, the fast-developing technologies from nano to space exploration and energy, as well as robotic and quantum physics would make human race losing its humanity. Looking at Gabriel’s work, one can appreciate the strong religious influence. Inspired by the myth of the Golden Calf from the Old Testament, and the many antique myths depicting the end of the humanity, Gabriel build his robots as 21st century religious effigies borrowing his style to the Voodoo or Pre Colombian religious artefacts. This combination of religious elements, human historical wisdom, and technology, revised in the light of our 21st Century is for Gabriel a way to question and put in perspective the deadly devotion of our species to a divinity that could cause our end.