David Salle: New Pastorals

Published on the occasion of the exhibition David Salle: New Pastorals at Gladstone, New York in 2024. Foreword by Nancy Spector and essay by Ben Lerner. To create this new series of dynamically constructed paintings, the New Pastorals (2024–), Salle developed an AI training model in partnership with engineer Grant Davis, focused exclusively on his own previous work, namely his Pastorals series from the late 1990s and early 2000s. These canvases, according to the artist, provided the perfect range of data to deconstruct and reassemble: their compositions are divided into discrete interlocking shapes; there are several distinct color palettes operating simultaneously; and they are suffused with a myriad of detail. What resulted, when the machine was torqued by a lever that determines degrees of similarity and dissimilarity, were irreal mountain landscapes populated by fragmenting bodies, vestiges of bathers and shepherds succumbing to the determinant forces of code.