Paints

The logic of domination is intensifying: the law of the strongest prevails, dictated by power, violence, and money, at the expense of all humanistic ideals.

ORLAN is not content merely to observe. She believes that artists have a responsibility to react and take a stand: ORLAN does so with her body, her voice, and her image. Here, she screams, shouts, and cries—not in resigned lament, but in active anger, political anger. This rage becomes artistic material, a driving force for creation, an act of resistance.

ORLAN creates manifest self-portraits and breaks down the walls of ice between traditional artistic techniques—painting—and new technologies, including generative artificial intelligence reworked through digital photomontages. AI enhances painting; painting enhances AI.

Her interventions in painting are sometimes visible, very visible, barely visible, invisible, or simply depicted—all designed to elicit a keen visual focus on the work, in line with Robert Filliou’s principle of equivalence: “Well done, poorly done, not done.” Her approach encourages the viewer to scrutinize the materiality of the work, as they must learn to distinguish between images generated by AI and those created by humans in order to perceive the sfumato—the blurred boundary—between painting and the representation of painting that ORLAN presents.

At the same time, the viewer is confronted with the conflicts that exist simultaneously within the works and in the world. The viewer is no longer merely an “eye”; he or she transcends passivity in the face of contemporary strife and recognizes the urgency of individual and collective accountability.

In contrast to the artistic practices of her time, ORLAN wanted to create works without using a paintbrush—a tool so common, so traditional, so often used by men to depict the body, movement, and material! 

It is geometric, industrial abstract painting—without brushstrokes, without thick paint, without “fine brushwork.” There isn’t the slightest trace of the body, yet it is still the viewer who completes the work! When the viewer walks by and observes the painting, they can simultaneously see themselves reflected in it.

The body is there, as if frozen in place; the viewers are inside the artwork!

The artwork becomes a mirror for them, physically incorporating the viewer’s presence into the work. 

In 2025, ORLAN reexamines painting within the context of today’s creative practices and tools. She embraces digital technology to explore new ways of “painting.”

Generative AI allows him to break down the barriers between the old and the new, between traditional craftsmanship and new media. 

She presents these works on a reflective screen, drawing on her principle of incorporating the body of “the other.”

ORLAN, 2025.

His trip to India was part of “le plan du film”, a series of works imagined from the reading of a quote by Jean-Luc Godard: “The only greatness of Jacques Becker’s Montparnasse 19 is that it is not only an upside-down film, but in a way the upside-down of cinema.” The concept was to take Godard literally, to create an upside-down film, starting with the poster and promotion with the trailer, letrilles, a soundtrack and a TV show to launch the feature. ORLAN enlisted the help of Publidécor, an advertising agency specializing in 1950s painted movie posters, to create fourteen painted posters based on photos of the artist and recycled works. Her intention with these hand-painted acrylic posters on 3 m x 2 m canvases was to tell the story of her life in art. ORLAN made the posters using the names of her friends in the art world at the time, and one or two names of movie stars to make it seem as if the film existed. She also staged a fake press conference with director Bigas Luna and curator Lorand Hegyi for a Valencia biennial. She invited a number of journalists to talk about a film she had made that didn’t really exist.

To escape the father’s domain, one must shed one’s skin. ORLAN therefore decides to experiment with new, multiple identities, in a humorous and detached manner. ORLAN advocates for shifting, mutating, nomadic identities, rather than fixed ones.

In this series, ORLAN, each photo features a different outfit as well as a hat ranging from a kepi to a miter, including a baseball cap and a donkey’s head.

ORLAN paints with a gun from a garage near her home. She’d convinced him to lend her a space to work in, away from the dust, outside opening hours.

First she researched, sketched and drew, then composed abstract works that she spray-painted on white laminate using resist systems.

The paint seeped under the pieces of tape, but ORLAN persevered until the finish was perfect, creating works that are extremely glossy, lacquered like a mirror in which one can see one’s reflection. It is geometric abstract painting—almost industrial in style—and there is not the slightest trace of a body, yet it is the viewer who creates the artwork! When the viewer walks by and observes the painting, they can simultaneously see themselves reflected in it. The body is there; the viewers are within the artwork! The artwork is their mirror.