
PULL QUOTE
“The dilemma of making paintings after its 'death' and 'return' is to choose which legacy to embrace. Calvert’s paintings are palimpsests, archeological digs, engagements with art history, improvisational riffs, and fractured views. They wrestle with painting’s dual legacy without settling on an answer."
- John Yau, Hyperallergic

Artist Statement
My practice connects painting’s history to our current visual culture, which is shaped by algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and blurred boundaries between real and virtual. I use image generating machine learning models (StyleGAN) trained on a dataset of Dutch and Flemish still life paintings to create new invented images, which I print at large scale. Using stencils to protect parts of the printed images, I paint onto them. These masks create hard edges where paint meets reproduction.
The machine learning models generate forms reminiscent of still life, but distorted and unexpected. It was, in fact, a viral mutation which created many of the tulips depicted - a virus which today growers must use AI to eradicate. Like AI itself the images are seductive, but the initial beauty of the paintings is a ruse. Reproduction and painterly abstraction are indistinguishable in some places; the paintings unfold to reveal their mutations.
These blurred boundaries describe both the production and the product of my work–even my own gendered position is unstable, since my paintings contrast flower subjects, historically suitable material for women artists, and interventions into the fields of gestural abstraction and digital media, which are both historically coded masculine.
Tulips depicted in paintings, like digital imagery (NFTs) have been subject to use as currency, and particularly ripe for economic manipulation. By recalling flower paintings, I elicit their role as emblems of value speculation, futures trading, and Dutch colonialist trade and power. In turn, my work explores the way that painterly “transgression” and invention are often complicit in the expansion of speculative capitalism. Like the invisible hand of the market, AI in our lives is largely invisible. By collaborating with AI, I investigate how these neural networks shape our decisions by predicting and replicating needs and desires.

Biography
BORN 1976 HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE ::: LIVES & WORKS - SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI
TIFFANY CALVERT received her MFA in 2005 from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and her BA in 1998 from Oberlin College. She first exhibited at Ferrara Showman Gallery in the 2020 group exhibition Art in Doom, curated by Matthew Weldon Showman. Calvert’s work has also been exhibited at the Lawrimore Project (Seattle, WA), E.TAY Gallery (NY), the Speed Museum (Louisville, KY), KMAC Museum (Louisville, KY), the Susquehanna Art Museum (PA), and Cadogan Contemporary (London, UK), among others. Residencies include the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, I-Park, and ArtOmi International Arts Center where she received a Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship. Calvert has received grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She is Associate Professor & Chair, MFA in Visual Art at the Sam Fox School of Design + Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
As an artist, Tiffany Calvert applies contemporary painting techniques to historical imagery. Her recent work uses the seventeenth-century Dutch floral still life as a springboard for exploring the shifting nature of human perception. Calvert’s paintings incorporate diverse technologies, including fresco, 3D modeling, and data manipulation. The exhibition includes eight new paintings from her latest series which uses image generating machine learning models (StyleGAN) trained on images of 1,007 historical still life paintings to create the image printed on canvas. A digitally-designed large format vinyl stencil is then applied to the surface before being painted on with oils. When the stencil is peeled off it creates hard edges, and preserves areas of the print. John Yau, in his Hyperallergic profile, compares their “improvisational riffs and fractured views” to de Kooning.

Curriculum Vitae
*FULL CV AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
EDUCATION
MFA Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, Fine Art, 2005
BA Oberlin College, with Honors in Art, Liberal Arts with Fine Arts major and Women’s Studies minor, 1998
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 The Tulips are Too Excitable, KMAC Museum, Louisville KY
2023 Adversarial Nature, Tinney Contemporary, Nashville
2022 Image Value, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans
Encounter/Exchange: Tiffany Calvert + Naomi Reis, Praise Shadows Gallery, Boston [two person exhibition]
2020 S/ample Data, Tinney Contemporary, Nashville
2019 SH/FT: Tiffany Calvert + Alex Kanevsky, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg PA [two person exhibition]
2018 Semper Augustus, Moremen Gallery, Louisville KY
2017 Tiffany Calvert: Rainbow Chaos, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro AR
2016 every thing every where, Brick + Mortar Gallery, Easton PA
Tenure exhibition, Raritan Valley Community College, Branchburg NJ
2015 Tiffany Calvert, Carl & Sloan Contemporary, Portland OR
2008 Tiffany Calvert: New Work, Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago IL
2006 New Paintings by Tiffany Calvert, Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago IL
2004 Tiffany Calvert: New Work, Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago IL
RECENT, SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023 Living Arrangements, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York City
Our Week, with Tiger Strikes Asteroid Collective and Process ITW, Seoul, Korea
San Francisco Art Fair, with Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans
2022 Volcano Lovers, Haunt Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Satellite Art Fair, with Tiger Strikes Asteroid curatorial collective, Miami
One of Many, Harper Gallery, Greenville SC
The Art of Europe, Speed Museum, Louisville KY
2021 Still, Life! Mourning, Meaning, Mending, 21C Louisville, KY
New Year, New Art, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans
Past Performance as Indicator of Future Outcomes: an exhibition of work by women who use Artificial Intelligence in their art making process, Carnegie Center for Art & History, New Albany IN (exhibition cancelled during COVID)
2020 Art in Doom, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans
The Shands Collection: New Directions, Quappi Gallery, Louisville KY
2018 Spring, Cadogan Contemporary, London UK
Something Pretty: works by Tiffany Calvert, Angela Dufresne, Justin Favela,
Stephen Rolfe Powell and HuiMeng Wang, Morlan Gallery, Transylvania University, Lexington KY
Long term loan to the Speed Museum, Louisville KY
2017 The Prolonged Gaze: Tiffany Calvert, Vian Sora, and Nhat Tran, guest curated by Mirada Lash, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Museum, Zephyr Gallery, Louisville KY
Synthesizing Nature, The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster NJ
New Recruits, Cressman Center for Visual Arts, University of Louisville
2016 Verblist, curated by Mark Joshua Epstein, E.TAY Gallery, New York City
Synthesizing Nature, View Art Center, Old Forge NY
2015 The Memory Palace, Cedar Crest College, Allentown PA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2024 Aria Baci, “Does AI Have a Place in Art?”, LEO Weekly, Mar. 10-16
2022 Joy Garnett ,“Tiffany Calvert’s Uncanny Valley” (Interview). Evergreen Review [online]
Amy Wilson, “Featured Artist: Tiffany Calvert – A Conversation” (Interview). Majuscule, Issue 8, April 2022 [online]
Joe Craig, “Tiffany Calvert: Image Value”, Number: Inc. Magazine, Dec. 2022 [online]
2021 Justin Nolin Key “Tiffany Calvert – This is not a Simulation” (Interview), Artist Proof Podcast, Nov. 19 [online]
2020 John Yau, “Painting’s Divided Legacy”. Hyperallergic, 7 March. [online]
Rochelle Belsito, “Shift: A new exhibition featuring the artwork of Tiffany Calvert and Alex Kanevsky explores the passage of time”, American Art Collector, Feb.
2018 Jo Anne Triplett, “Staff Picks: Tiffany Calvert Semper Augustus”, LEO Weekly, Nov. 30
Mary Clore, “Semper Augustus”, Ruckus Critical Art Review, Nov. 11
2017 Cara Sullivan, “Perception in the Digital Age: The Hybrid Paintings of Tiffany Calvert”. Number Magazine, Issue 92, Nov.
2012 Allison Meier, “Go Sunset Park: An Emerging Art Community.” Hyperallergic.com, Sept.
2010 Taube, Isabel. “The Open Image.” Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting SVA Galleries, New York City [exhibition catalog]
2009 Greene, Warren. Jettison: New Ideas in Abstraction [exhibition catalogue]
2008 Regina Hackett, “Never Fear, Painting is Here.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 17
Gayle Clemans, “Falling in Love with Intimacy of Painting.” The Seattle Times, February 19
Patricia Courson, “Tiffany Calvert: New Work.” Flavorpill.net, March 14
Dan Gunn, “Recommended: Some Abstraction Occurs.” Newcity.com, January 17
Patricia Courson, “Some Abstraction Occurs.” Flavorpill.net, January 11
2006 Fred Camper, “Two-Dimensional Dioramas.” The Chicago Reader, March 24: Section 2, 24
Mary Birmingham, “Garage Art Work is Raw, Real with Mixed Identities.” The Jersey Journal, October 27: 23
2005 Mid-Atlantic Region cover artist. New American Paintings. Boston: The Open Studios Press
2002 Alan Artner. “Paintings Are Disarming, Memorable.” Chicago Tribune, August 9: sec. 7
COLLECTIONS
21C Hotel + Museum, Louisville KY
Art Omi Collection, Omi NY
Fidelity Investments Corporate Collection
Hudson County Community College Foundation, Jersey City NJ
Speed Museum, Louisville KY
Omni Hotel, Louisville KY