Artist
statement
In Dreaming Beauties, Galina Hartinger investigates the transformation of portraiture in the age of artificial intelligence.
Drawing upon a background in theatrical makeup and a long-standing engagement with portrait painting, the artist examines the contemporary face as a site where identity, desire, and technological construction converge.
The project focuses on female faces generated through artificial intelligence. These portraits appear familiar and emotionally accessible, yet they belong to no one. They are assembled from vast image databases and statistical probabilities rather than personal memory or lived experience.
Hartinger approaches these images not as digital products but as cultural artifacts.
The portraits are printed on translucent organza and enclosed within transparent acrylic structures. This material configuration is essential to the work's meaning.
Organza introduces instability. The image becomes suspended between visibility and disappearance, presence and absence. Depending on the viewer's position, the portrait emerges, dissolves, or becomes ghostlike.
The acrylic enclosure functions as a contemporary reliquary. It simultaneously protects, isolates, and elevates the image. What is preserved inside is not an individual identity but a visual ideal generated by technological systems.
The work occupies a space between portrait, relic, veil, and memorial object.
Historically, portraiture attempted to preserve the uniqueness of a person. In contrast, the faces within Dreaming Beauties are products of collective visual consumption. They reflect contemporary beauty standards shaped by algorithms, social media, advertising, and machine learning systems.
Rather than critiquing technology directly, the project observes a cultural transition.
The series asks what happens when the human face becomes infinitely reproducible, endlessly optimized, and detached from personal experience.
In this sense, Dreaming Beauties can be understood as an archive of a historical moment: a record of how technological systems increasingly participate in shaping contemporary notions of beauty, identity, and self-perception.
The works stand as quiet monuments to a new form of portraiture—one in which the image survives while the individual disappears.
Biography (Short)
Galina Hartinger is an Austrian-based artist whose work explores portraiture, identity, memory, and artificial intelligence. Originally trained in philosophy,history of religion, art history, and theatrical makeup, she investigates the human face as a site where personal identity and cultural projection intersect. Her practice spans watercolor portraiture, installation, and AI-generated imagery. In the ongoing project Dreaming Beauties / Nature Morte, she examines how algorithmic systems reshape contemporary concepts of beauty and individuality. Living and working in rural Austria, Hartinger develops works that connect traditional artistic craftsmanship with emerging digital technologies.
Biography
(extended)
Galina Hartinger is an Austrian-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice focuses on portraiture, identity, memory, and the cultural impact of artificial intelligence.
She studied Philosophy and History of Religion at Saint Petersburg State University and later pursued Art History and academic drawing. Before concentrating on contemporary art, she worked as a theatrical makeup artist, creating character transformations for opera performers and stage productions. This experience established a lasting interest in the human face as a site of transformation, vulnerability, and cultural construction.
Portraiture remains the central thread throughout her work. In her watercolor series Face is the Key, Hartinger investigates emotional presence and the subtle traces of individuality that persist beneath social roles and appearances.
Her more recent project, Dreaming Beauties / Nature Morte, expands this inquiry into the realm of artificial intelligence. Through AI-generated imagery, translucent organza installations, archival printing, and acrylic structures, she explores how algorithmic systems participate in shaping contemporary ideals of beauty and identity.
Rather than treating AI as a technological subject, Hartinger approaches it as a cultural phenomenon that reveals changing relationships between memory, image production, and self-perception.
Living and working in rural Austria, she develops projects that connect traditional artistic craftsmanship with emerging digital technologies.
Her work has been exhibited internationally in exhibitions and art projects in Europe and the United States.
Exhibitions
2025
2024
The Wrong Biennale — Low CFG Pavilion / AI Series (pending confirmation)
Art Expo Ljubljana — Dreaming Beauties / Nature Morte (AI Series)
15th Ljubljana Forum — Face is the Key / Watercolour Portraits
Discovery Frankfurt Art Fair (Group Exhibition) — Dreaming Beauties Selection
LA Art Show — Perseus Gallery / Group Exhibition “Face is the Key”
“What about Eve?” — Platforms Project — Public Tobacco Factory, Hellenic Parliament Library + NEON
"Unlocked Identities", Perseus & HMVC Gallery, New York, USA
Contact
representation
📧 galinahartinger@gmail.com
🌍 Austria
🔗 www.galinahartinger.com
📸 Instagram: @faceisthekey