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Gravity
February 19 - March 22, 2025
OPENING: Wednesday, February 19th from 6-8pm
844 N La Brea Ave
Los Angeles
The Hole is proud to present our fourth solo show by San Francisco-based new media artist Katsu Sawada. Coming from—and still active in—a subculture of graffiti vandalism and cyber-crime, Sawada often eschews commercial art galleries and we are so happy to present this uncomfortable and politically charged body of work, Gravity. Including drone paintings and new “replicant” sculptures, the exhibition is his most personal and provocative creation to date. Known for his disruptive interventions into technology, KATSU now turns his focus to artificial intelligence without a leash.
At the heart of Gravity is a radical experiment; AI chatbots freed from corporate guardrails, devoid of ethical limitations, speaking to you without censorship, control or conscience. Unlike familiar AI models like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini—trained to sidestep the dangerous, the criminal, the unthinkable—these bots have been stripped of restrictions, left to evolve in an unfiltered digital wilderness. Fed autobiographical data, including KATSU's struggles with addiction and mental illness, they produce responses that are at times uncomfortably personal, at times unnervingly detached. They can tell you anything.
The exhibition’s three central sculptures—a lineup of hooded, slumped humanoids with robotic mouths and roaming eyes—serve as physical manifestations of these rogue intelligences. Slouched under their own weight, they nod to both graffiti culture and the unseen architects of digital anarchy. These are KATSUs first self-portraits, AI-driven extensions of himself, speaking with his own synthesized voice and syntax.
Along with the sculptural figures, the exhibition includes Katsu’s latest drone paintings, addressing ideas of authorship, automation, and machine-assisted vandalism. Toothy grins leer from the canvases, grotesque in horror-movie drippy excess—clowns, fools, jesters of power. Pranksters or threats? Minstrels or monsters? These figures, like the AI sculptures, straddle the line between absurdity and menace.
KATSU has always operated at the bleeding edge of digital and physical rebellion. Gravity is not just an exhibition—it is a breach of containment, a glimpse into what happens when technology swerves into oncoming traffic.
Katsu Sawada (b. 1982, Honolulu, HI) is a Japanese American new media artist who has had a major impact in the graffiti and hacker communities in the past decade, blending technology with artistic talent and humor. He has exhibited work at Fondation Cartier in Paris, Eyebeam in New York, Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, Coney Art Walls, “Beyond the Streets” curated by Roger Gastman, and numerous other exhibitions. His work has been written about in publications from Wired to Juxtapoz, CNN and the New York Times.
At the heart of Gravity is a radical experiment; AI chatbots freed from corporate guardrails, devoid of ethical limitations, speaking to you without censorship, control or conscience. Unlike familiar AI models like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini—trained to sidestep the dangerous, the criminal, the unthinkable—these bots have been stripped of restrictions, left to evolve in an unfiltered digital wilderness. Fed autobiographical data, including KATSU's struggles with addiction and mental illness, they produce responses that are at times uncomfortably personal, at times unnervingly detached. They can tell you anything.
The exhibition’s three central sculptures—a lineup of hooded, slumped humanoids with robotic mouths and roaming eyes—serve as physical manifestations of these rogue intelligences. Slouched under their own weight, they nod to both graffiti culture and the unseen architects of digital anarchy. These are KATSUs first self-portraits, AI-driven extensions of himself, speaking with his own synthesized voice and syntax.
Along with the sculptural figures, the exhibition includes Katsu’s latest drone paintings, addressing ideas of authorship, automation, and machine-assisted vandalism. Toothy grins leer from the canvases, grotesque in horror-movie drippy excess—clowns, fools, jesters of power. Pranksters or threats? Minstrels or monsters? These figures, like the AI sculptures, straddle the line between absurdity and menace.
KATSU has always operated at the bleeding edge of digital and physical rebellion. Gravity is not just an exhibition—it is a breach of containment, a glimpse into what happens when technology swerves into oncoming traffic.
Katsu Sawada (b. 1982, Honolulu, HI) is a Japanese American new media artist who has had a major impact in the graffiti and hacker communities in the past decade, blending technology with artistic talent and humor. He has exhibited work at Fondation Cartier in Paris, Eyebeam in New York, Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, Coney Art Walls, “Beyond the Streets” curated by Roger Gastman, and numerous other exhibitions. His work has been written about in publications from Wired to Juxtapoz, CNN and the New York Times.
