Denys Zhdanov, No Memory at art+art Galerie, Paris

“No Memory” by Denys Zhdanov, curated by Pierre Ponant, at art+art Galerie, Paris, 11/04/2024 – 26/04/2024.

No Memory. Deepfake archive of recycled memories.

This exhibition produced by art+art gallery and curated by Pierre Ponant is part of a series titled “Firsts Without Expiry,” dedicated to the works of young artists graduated from art schools or first solo exhibitions.

Denys Zhdanov is a natural intelligence, Ukrainian artist and designer, graduated from the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Bordeaux.

Here, he provides some insights into his working process: “My work evokes the overconsumption of data in the digital world. We produce too many objects, consume too many natural resources, and generate too much digital data that fills data centers, contemporary archives.

This creates an ecological problem and distorts our perception of reality, turning it into fiction. My approach is therefore linked to the recycling of information through metaphors and paradoxes propagated by propaganda and pop culture.”

No Memory is a multimedia installation that highlights the reproduction of memory because of image overconsumption. It’s a kind of “deepfake archive” of recycled memories and false memories generated by artificial intelligence.

Unlike traditional archives, it mimics the functioning of physical memory, which is fluid and uncertain, by blending facts, real events, and imaginary ones. No Memory installation interprets the confusion of realities through the nostalgia of eras never experienced and the collective trauma of an imaginary apocalypse, bridging the gap between the collection of physical archives, the regeneration of these archives with AI, and the reproduction of physical artifacts from generated images.