How Agnieszka Pilat Grew to turn out to be Silicon Valley’s Approved Artist

Agnieszka Pilat along with her robotic dog and muse, Living.
Photo: Mark Sommerfeld

Without reference to her Chelsea digs near the blue-chip Gagosians and Zwirners, Pilat does no longer accept great of a reputation within the mainstream paintings world. She hasn’t been wanted in substantial biennials and isn’t owned by necessary museums, and the critics largely ignore her. But the forty eight-year-extinct is loved by a team of totally-off men — her collectors are largely men — who don’t participate great within the paintings world and are seemingly became off by its snobberies and sanctimonies. As a change, she places Silicon Valley’s Ayn Rand–ian, futurist ideologies into paint. Her work could well even be chanced on, as soon as you occur to peer fastidiously, decorating the sets of the contemporary Matrix movie. And he or she’s with out a doubt no longer being ironic about any of it.

“I am repeatedly that limited one who grew up in Poland, in communism,” she says, “and for me, America and American aristocracy, which you guys don’t accept — aristocracy cherish we now accept in Europe — the aristocracy right here is the industry. So I teach it’s notable to give correct tribute to of us in technology.” She is merrily in carrier to the tech nomenklatura at a time when great of the nation has solution to despise its participants for the forces they’ve unleashed on society and for their outrageous stages of wealth.

Pilat describes Craig McCaw, the clicking-averse telecommunications billionaire who moreover purchased his bear island, as her top patron and “angel.” Every other collector is John Krafcik, the light CEO of Waymo, Google’s self-riding-vehicle unit. “Agnieszka’s work captures the magic of technology in a human, dauntless system, and I teach that helps us all better uncover to it,” he says.

Pilat in her studio.
Photo: Mark Sommerfeld

Krafcik offered her to Yuri Milner, the reclusive Russian Israeli venture-capital billionaire. He has reportedly sprinkled Kremlin money across Silicon Valley, the set up he spent $100 million on a nouveau château in Los Altos Hills. “He’s very laborious to succeed in,” says Pilat. “Even his billionaire neighbors don’t know him.” Milner commissioned a painting of a fraction of machinery indicate in self-riding autos. “He cherished it,” she says, “however he’ll by no map hang the painting. He by no map displays staunch work. His whole residence is cherish a digital Sistine Chapel, so you approach into the condominium and it’s cherish a extraordinarily opulent roughly cathedral-attempting thing, and likewise you watched all these are paintings, however then every little thing changes. They’re big, cherish, the total ceiling — it’s all LEDs.” She says he’ll presumably fine preserve the analog painting in storage.

What’s it cherish facing these dudes? “They’re all egomaniacs,” she says, sounding totally amused, even rather affectionate. “They’re all wrapped up in themselves. It’s cherish talking to a fish out of water. They fine don’t accept it.”

Jaron Lanier, the Silicon Valley oracle who’s always described as the godfather of digital fact, sums up a couple of of Pilat’s attraction to this cohort: “A hit techie guys admire, admire, admire it when an comely girl speaks their language, even when no longer every little thing she says is supportive. They esteem it. I don’t teach what she no doubt says is uniformly clear, however of us hear what they’re looking out to hear.”

Born in 1973, Pilat grew up all the map in which by the bitter, ideal-gasp years of the Icy Battle. Her mother used to be a health club instructor and her father a pastry chef. “There used to be fine total distress round,” she recalls. “All people used to be heart-broken and lived in these gray substantial blocks. It didn’t topic as soon as you occur to had been a doctor or a janitor; you had every little thing the similar.” The early-pandemic gallop on two-ply made her nostalgic: “We by no map had bathroom paper. It used to be, cherish, the greatest commodity.” She laughs. “I endure in mind repeatedly standing in line as a limited bit limited one.” She hated the Soviets and longed for the West. In 1985, her “admire for America” crystallized when Rocky Balboa knocked out Ivan Drago: “All people in Poland used to be cherish, ‘Yeahhhh!’ ”

Her father adapted well to the transition to capitalism and ended up owning many bakeries. The family grew prosperous. “I if truth be told accept a admire totally free venture and moreover worth the worth of laborious work, as a result of that’s how I grew up,” she says.

Strolling Living in Chelsea.
Photo: Mark Sommerfeld

In 2004, as it occurs, the year that what used to be then called TheFacebook used to be founded, she moved to San Francisco. Her first job used to be at Gold’s Gymnasium, and she enrolled within the Academy of Work University to stare illustration. She used to be technically professional. One in every of her earliest commissions got right here from Paul Stein, a developer who constructed Airbnb’s headquarters. He wished a portrait, no longer of a man however of a machine. Pilat did an oil painting of an extinct-college fire dismay that he loved. Soon notice obtained round about her work. “The Bay Dwelling is a extraordinarily runt crowd,” Pilat says. “Must you meet one particular person, you meet many.” She chanced on a patron within the tech govt Peter Hirshberg and scaled up from there. Pilat’s subsequent collector used to be Steve Jurvetson, one among Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists. Jurvetson used to be a board member of Tesla and for the time being sits on the board of SpaceX. “He’s the one who opened plenty of doorways for me,” recalls Pilat.

And he or she in actuality admired what they had been constructing, no longer like many in San Francisco, which she calls “the heart of liberal crazies”: “They don’t understand what collectivism ends in and what punishing somebody fine as a result of they’re successful ends in.” A buddy gave her a reproduction of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. “I’d no longer be the artist that I am with out that e book,” she says. “It gives you an true correct to compose your skills to the fullest and focal level on what you watched your skills is, and there’s energy that comes from that, and I teach America is loads about that.” The brutality of Randian individualism, of the cult of the ego and its success, galvanized Pilat.

“In Silicon Valley, the e book is terribly in fashion, clearly,” she says. “But it absolutely’s still as a result of as soon as you occur to could well be very well off, and white, and likewise you cherish Atlas Shrugged — oh boy, which that it is possible you’ll even be a target.” She remembers being astonished at a cocktail birthday party when she chanced on that Mark Pincus — the tech billionaire who co-founded the on-line-gaming firm Zynga (Words With Pals, FarmVille, etc.) and made early investments in Facebook and Twitter — used to be, in Pilat’s telling, “all about Ayn Rand.” (Pincus says he has no recollection of this.) McCaw, Pilat says, “is so extinct and well off he doesn’t care at this level, however he’s famously a Republican, however he is no longer going to accept a conversation about it as a result of it’s fine hostile for business to be a Republican overtly in these tech circles.”

Photo: Mark Sommerfeld

Most no longer too long within the past, Pilat’s work used to be featured within the residence of but any other tech-world fable: Neo. She used to be commissioned to attain paintings for The Matrix Resurrections, and one among her paintings could well moreover be seen whereas Neo — er, Thomas Anderson — chews a fraction of steak in his penthouse condominium. She thinks the Matrix is already coming true within the invent of the metaverse. The loads will an increasing number of, and voluntarily, drag in. The waking world, staunch-life experiences, will seemingly be for handiest the one percent. “I teach the divide is occurring already,” she says, telling me about some staunch-estate deals happening within the metaverse that she knows about. “The delusion of the metaverse, it’s happening in entrance of our eyes, and the pandemic handiest accelerated it.” Holy Wachowski!

“Machines are younger of us of humanity,” she adds, waxing philosophical subsequent to Living. “So us, as simply of us, stewards of machine technology and AI, it’s our duty to culturally and morally accept a relationship with them so they grow up to be simply voters.”

Living’s actions are uncanny, these of a blood-and-guts pup. Up the stairs, down the hall, and lumbering across the corner it goes. Pilat can simply indicate an object within the room along with her controller and the dog will maneuver over and snatch it up with an outstretched claw.

Pilat as soon as presently affixes an oil keep on with the dog’s claw to paint. “It’s cherish an extension of my arm,” she says. In plenty of paintings, presumably made the broken-down system — by hand — Living is the topic, emulating works from paintings historical previous. There it is posing for a reimagined model of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2). And listed below are two roboclaws virtually touching, an homage to God and Adam on Michelangelo’s ceiling within the Sistine Chapel.

Dorka Keehn, a San Francisco–based totally paintings adviser and curator who used to be on town’s arts commission, calls Pilat “an comely painter” and says she’s “doing a carrier to the paintings world” by participating the tech machers. “It’s very intimidating to enter a recent museum or gallery and peer at a couple of of these items as soon as you occur to don’t accept any roughly context,” says Keehn, “and I teach these titans don’t cherish no longer radiant. They’re weak to being the top particular person within the room, and so they approach in and who’s telling them? Some 20-one thing correct out of paintings college.” But with Pilat, says Keehn, “they’ve obtained Living the dog, which they can roughly geek out on the robotic aspect of it, however then she’s making these classical references to paintings, to the Renaissance.”

I demand this magazine’s paintings critic, Jerry Saltz, to rob a assessment, however he is much less convinced. “By-product dreck,” he says. “Now not one lick of life, originality, thought about surface, color, structure, or even enviornment topic. This work is and will seemingly be worth nothing — as hostile to to the Silicon rubes who gape that plenty of Silicon rubes cherish them equipped paintings cherish this.” Now not system help, one painting Pilat made with Living, B70 Self Portrait 02, equipped for $31,500 at Sotheby’s as segment of an auction presumably designed to attraction to Bay House kinds called “Boundless House … The Possibilities of Burning Man.”

“Now not stunned about Jerry,” says Pilat when I uncover her about his harsh assessment. “The paintings world is notoriously sad about tech billionaires, and I am singing their tune. Unlike Diego Rivera, I gained’t set Lenin in a commission paid by an industrialist.” (In 1932, Rivera used to be commissioned to attain the necessary mural within the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Rivera’s carried out work, Man at the Crossroads, which contrasted socialism and capitalism with a worker at the heart, obtained destroyed when he refused to get rid of a depiction of Lenin.)

Finally, it’s obvious whose aspect she is on: the machine’s. She says about Living, “I teach right here is going to be the necessary celeb robotic.” Certainly, Living is Pixar-fine. But inferior, too. Do no longer omit that wild episode of Gloomy Mirror with the killer dog-bot? When the NYPD obtained its paws on a model of Living (its used to be blue) and sicced it on a crime scene within the Bronx, it used to be banished help to Boston.

“It used to be a unsightly PR moment,” Pilat says. She believes the public ought to be well offered to the machines. We rob the dog for a stroll on West 26th Avenue. “I are attempting to continually costume in yellow in order that which that it is possible you’ll be in a situation to with out problems gape there’s a human with it,” she says. A lady approaches, trepidatious, to demand if it’s equipped on Amazon. (It’s no longer.) I put up a video of Living on my Instagram Fable with a ballotasking if the dog is “fine or provoking”; 88 percent of respondents select the latter. “KILL IT NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE,” one replies.

“My patrons are no doubt the machines of the long streak,” Pilat says topic-of-factly. “I work for the machine, no longer the man. Must you gallop to a museum at the unique time in Europe and likewise you gape a picture of an aristocrat or some well off guy, you watched, Oh, these are my cultural ancestors. So in my mind, I gape the museum of the long streak when an radiant AI is accessible in and appears to be like at this” — she gestures to a painting of Living — “and, within the similar system, is cherish, Oh, these are my ancestors.”

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