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Mihai Grecu

Romania

Artist Statement

I’ve always been drawn to what feels uncertain—fragile memories, unstable realities, the spaces between documentary and dream. Working with AI is a natural extension of that. I don’t see it as a tool that replaces the artist, but as something we can challenge, bend, and even misunderstand on purpose. I like using AI to reconstruct lost images, reimagine historical ghosts, or create fictional disasters that feel strangely familiar. It’s a way to speak about our time without pointing directly at it. My work is slow, often meditative. Long shots, surreal landscapes, political traces—sometimes it feels like I’m trying to hold onto something before it disappears. I’m interested in collective memory, how history gets buried or distorted, and how technology can make us see things again from a new angle—or invent memories we never had. I don’t believe art has to offer answers, especially now. But I do think it can hold space for ambiguity, for strange beauty, and for questions that don’t resolve. That, to me, feels like a kind of truth—maybe not factual, but emotional. Felt.

Published in >
The AI Art Magazine, Number 2
Local dystopia, AI generation, 2025
Local dystopia, AI generation, 2025.
Mihai Grecu, Local dystopia, AI generation, 2025

Description

This work extends a reflection on Eastern Europe projected into a dystopian future, where religious symbols are no longer fixed but repurposed—mobilized in service of a power that blurs the lines between faith, control, and territory. It suggests a world where old structures are hijacked by new forms of totalitarianism.

Process

In this image, I show a tank moving slowly through a muddy, empty landscape—not with a cannon, but bearing an illuminated altar, a religious icon, and a golden cross. This strange fusion of war machine and place of worship reflects something I’ve carried with me since childhood in Ceaușescu’s Romania, where state power, military spectacle, and religious symbolism were deeply entangled. I use digital tools—3D modeling, AI, photogrammetry—not to recreate the past, but to explore its residue. This image isn’t about the end of the world, but what remains when ideology loses meaning yet continues to function. The tank-chapel drifts forward, absurd and solemn. It’s a ghost from a system that no longer exists, but whose rituals and symbols still haunt the present.

Tools

Midjourney, upscaled with Freepik

Image credit:
Essay by
The AI Art Magazine, Number 2
Published in:
The AI Art Magazine, Number 2,
September 2025
WHY?
The magazine reveals what happens when humans and machines get creative together. We’re throwing the doors wide open believe it's going to be a big party—come in and let’s dance.
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