Brendan Dawes
The Art of Form and Code

Altarpiece: Ascension

Second in the Altarpiece series

    2025
  • Archival print on Photo Rag Metallic 340 Paper
  • Left panel 8 3/10 x 23 2/5 in. (21 x 59.4 cm.)
  • Center panel 16 1/2 x 23 2/5 in. (42 x 59.4 cm.)
  • Right panel 8 3/10 x 23 2/5 in. (21 x 59.4 cm.)
  • JPEG
  • 1672 x 1184 pixels

Altarpiece: Ascension is the second in the Altarpiece series and was shown as part of Subject to Change at Gazelli Art House in London.

Brendan Dawes’ Altarpiece: Ascension (2025) continues the artist’s series of triptychs that fuse the iconography of church altarpieces with contemporary reflections on AI. Building on Altarpiece: The Divinity, shown in February as part of Christie’s first AI auction in New York, Ascension addresses the sweeping rise of AI and its influence across every aspect of human life. The left panel imagines a utopian future of progress and harmony; the centre reintroduces the goddess figure from The Divinity, now assimilated with the machinery of AI; while the right panel warns of the chaos that might follow unchecked technological proliferation, populated with fleeing CEOs and “tech bros” in private planes and spaceships. Created through meticulously collaged images using the ComfyUI interface, the work’s golden and bronze tones, dramatic lighting, and layered “scenes within scenes” offer both grandeur and unease. As with earlier works, the triptych’s three panels also reference the architecture of modern computing as proposed by John von Neumann: input, processing, output.

More details about the work.