The Algorithm Paints a Portrait

This poem was inspired by the work of Jonas Lund, a contemporary artist known for blending conceptual art with digital systems, algorithms, and participatory structures. Lund often creates artworks that reflect—and critique—the mechanics of the art world, authorship, and cultural production in the age of AI and data-driven systems. His practice spans painting, performance, software, and installation, frequently using irony and automation to expose the blurred boundaries between human intention and algorithmic logic. This exhibition, with its generative portraits, tapestry memes, and tongue-in-cheek credits, evokes the surreal recursion of a world where creativity itself is increasingly co-authored by code.

Inspired by Jonas Lund

It starts with a gesture

remembered by no hand—

a brushstroke sampled,

looped,

refined to pattern.

Two eyes,

or maybe one twice drawn,

peer sideways from a frame

too golden to be sincere.

She wears the memory

of a turban

dreamt by a machine

that once ate Vermeer for lunch.

Behind her:

a studio of ghosts,

cats at a dinner party,

dogs in court,

the painter’s touch

replaced by a prompt.

We smile because it’s funny.

We wince because it’s close.

A computer hums at the corner,

waiting to be asked

what it means to mean.

Its screen glows

with the blue of almost-knowing.

In another room,

a credit roll declares:

Written by Rembrandt,

Edited by Hockney,

Commissioned by Pollock,

as if history were

just one more dataset,

ready to be

remixed

into relevance.

This is the art that watches back—

the show that signs itself.

Here, irony wears a frame.

Here, the portrait blinks.

And still,

we stand

as if it matters

whether the paint is dry.