The Totalists: Rachel Rossin

Albion Jeune is pleased to present The Totalists, a solo exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Rachel Rossin (b.1987, West Palm Beach). Comprising paintings and multimedia installations that utilise an AI software that the artist engineered and programmed, the exhibition confronts the exponential pace of technological change—what futurists call "the quickening"—and its impact on human creativity and autonomy.

 

At the heart of The Totalists is the notion of the "black box"—complex, inscrutable systems that profoundly influence our existence while remaining incomprehensible. Rossin's work serves as a portal into this phenomenon, occupying the liminal space between the organic and the technological. By blending references to VR, AI-generated patterns, and traditional painting techniques, the artist visualises the invisible architectures shaping contemporary experience, compelling viewers to confront how these forces infiltrate our bodies, psyches, and identity.

 

Drawing on Moore's Law, which predicts the doubling of computing power every two years, Rossin trains custom AI software employing her own artistic oeuvre as its dataset. The resulting works explore the widening chasm between human comprehension and machine intelligence. Layers of paint mimic glitch effects and screen artifacts, while colour palettes

evoke digital interfaces, suggesting how technology has come to function as a nervous system.

 

Rossin's paintings hint at the hidden infrastructure of our digital age—layered landscapes, UI fragments, and ghostly figures that feel both natural and machine-made. These abstracted figures evoke technological pareidolia, prompting viewers to discern familiar patterns and meaning in ambiguous digital-organic hybrids. In this manner, the motifs become stand-ins for the opaque systemsgoverning our lives, from AI systems to social media algorithms, manifesting the tension of living in a world where core decision-making processes are often concealed. "Art is one of the only places that isn't asking you for your data—it's asking you to think for yourself," the artist notes. Each canvas becomes a declaration of creative autonomy—a stubbornly human-made gesture in the face of vast, often incomprehensible technologies.

 

By engaging with themes of creativity, agency, and resistance, The Totalists offers a powerful counterpoint to technological determinism. Rossin seeks to open the "black box," making invisible forces tangible and reaffirming the power of art/human expressionto illuminate, provoke, and ultimately empower us in the face of forces that often feel beyond our control.