The Hole is proud to announce a second solo exhibition of DRONE FLOWERS by new media artist KATSU. Behind this nom de guerre the artist has written a lot of illegal graffiti and shared a lot of subversive computer work; this is his second exhibition of these drone flower works under the name. With Memory Foam, his last solo show at The Hole in January 2018, he continued themes introduced in his 2015 show Remember the Future about technology’s promise and its sad compromise. Using drone paintings, wallpaper, AI criminal portraits and a VR piece, KATSU looked deeper at how machine learning is outstripping emotional intelligence.

Debuted in January and remixed here with new video, these “drone flowers” are paintings made by a drone carrying a can of spray paint. KATSU pioneered this technique and featured its use in the 2015 show; here the drone has been programmed to autonomously execute repeated marks on each of the 200+ paintings, whereas previously the flight and spray was controlled by the artist’s hand remotely. As with his 2015 smiley face drone paintings, he chose flowers as a nod to the hippie culture that is an often-overlooked aspect of Silicon Valley tech culture.

In the artist’s words: “There’s a relationship to tulip mania [famous Dutch tulip market crash in the 1600s] and crypto currency, but the flowers are primarily about being ‘below the API’ and our automated future. These paintings are post-human works; they discuss authorship and the removal of humankind from the equation of life.”

This innovation of having the drone spray a preprogrammed protocol is a big step forward; however, in a new video being released here KATSU demonstrates that not only has he managed a simple flower, he can now program the drone to spray perfectly on a wall any drawing or text he can invent. Here the drone draws for us a beautiful sketch of Donald Trump getting fucked in the head. The second video in this exhibition is also new and shows some of his machine drawing programs; he executes his signature KATSU tag in a 3D expanding arrangement.

KATSU is a new media artist who graduated from Parsons and works in Brooklyn. He has had a major impact in the graffiti and hacker communities in the past decade, blending technology with artistic impulses and humour. His work has been featured in group shows at Fondation Cartier in Paris, and Eyebeam in Brooklyn, NY, as well as in media outlets Wired, Artnet, VICE and CNN.

Learn more about the exhibition here.