Brendan Dawes’ Altarpiece: Ascension (2025) continues the artist’s series of triptychs that fuse the iconography of church altarpieces with contemporary reflections on AI. Building on Altarpiece: The Divinity, shown in February as part of Christie’s first AI auction in New York, Ascension addresses the sweeping rise of AI and its influence across every aspect of human life. The left panel imagines a utopian future of progress and harmony; the centre reintroduces the goddess figure from The Divinity, now assimilated with the machinery of AI; while the right panel warns of the chaos that might follow unchecked technological proliferation, populated with fleeing CEOs and “tech bros” in private planes and spaceships. Created through meticulously collaged images using the ComfyUI interface, the work’s golden and bronze tones, dramatic lighting, and layered “scenes within scenes” offer both grandeur and unease. As with earlier works, the triptych’s three panels also reference the architecture of modern computing as proposed by John von Neumann: input, processing, output.

Brendan Dawes (b. 1966) is a British artist renowned for his thought provoking explorations of data, technology, and everyday objects. Rooted in the ethos of remix culture, Dawes’s work re-contextualises existing materials to examine how people experience the physical and digital worlds. Blending code, found objects, and tactile interfaces, he invites audiences to consider the poetry hidden in mundane moments and the hidden structures within complex data. In 2024 he collaborated with American film-maker Gary Hustwit to make the world’s first generative film. Titled Eno, the film is unique every time it is viewed, with 52 quintillion possible versions. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival it was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. A Lumen Prize (2020) and Aesthetica Art prize Alumni (2021), his work has been 3D printed on the International Space Station and featured in many exhibitions across the world including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US; Brighton Digital Festival, Brighton, UK; and ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany. He is Visiting Professor of Computational Art at Manchester Metropolitan University.