Each painting by Radim Koros is a cosmos. The constellations of the rickety flagella are intersected by rays of multicolored lights and strings of characters from foreign alphabets. Biomorphic garlands seem to want to become wires or a chip. It’s hard not to get the impression that a canvas like „Virtual Muse“ is a portal to another dimension or a dream of a digital being that has become conscious. The visions on each of the canvases are developed over the years. They are created without a prior plan. The artist’s hand is guided „into the unknown“ by intuition and … a computer program. The Virtual Muse with its ancient predecessor is linked by memory as an essential component of its nature. Before writing became popular, the ancients had to be skilled in memorizing songs, which was preserved in a very name of the mother of the muses Mnemosyne, which means „memory“. Today, the number and speed of operations performed by the Virtual Muse is determined by the random-access memory. The application used by Radim Koros creates remixes of reproductions of his paintings. After loading one, two or more image files, the software produces a new arrangement that relies heavily on deconstruction. The result of the transformation is a stimulus for the painter, a kind of hint on how to continue painting. If certain effects seem attractive, the creator, engaging his sixth sense, will process the information further. The action can be repeated many times. Screenshots llustrates how the algorithm processed the photograph of the oil painting „Themis“ during its production.A machine and a person will carry out the creative task completely differently. The software will always operate within the rigid framework that the programmer will impose on it. It will, even if it is a self-improving algorithm. After all, artificial intelligence will always be poorer in emotions! Or is it? Radim Koros is convinced that a moment can be observed where AI seems to „think“ and life is „glitching“ – the artist coined the term „NEXT“ to describe such a situation. The NEXT is a random data that was created as a result of a disruption of the computer system, which allows us to see the manifestation of life in it. A similarly uncontrolled unknown may surprise the artist during a painting act in dialogue with the medium. The elusive nature of NEXT is an impulse that allows art to free itself from learned patterns; it is a divine inspiration, an affirmation of progress and creation a positive vision. It is not without reason that the exhibition „01001110 01000101 01011000 01010100“ is complemented by “Huēhuecoyōtl”, who, mixing the fate of the Aztecs and their gods, consequently ran into trouble himself. The art of NEXT is to lose control. The power of Koros’s art is the fact that it builds the viewer’s desire to „stare“ at the picture and lose the sense of reality. We can return to the same work many times and still discover something in it that we have not noticed before. When we excitedly think that we have decoded Koros‘ language and understand his grammar, another glance brings us down to earth. The painting of Radim Koros is the Phaistos Disc.

ROBERT DOMŻALSKI