Wide Open

Description

Inspired by Magritte’s The Lovers, this piece explores intimacy and distance in the digital age. Two lovers attempt to connect but a thin layer of plastic keeps them apart. It’s not just a visual barrier, but also a conceptual one. “Plastic” implies something synthetic, performative, artificial. It mirrors the way we present ourselves online, and the artificial nature of how this image was created. Their faces are visible just enough to suggest a desire for closeness, while emphasizing the tension between proximity and separation, vulnerability and distrust.

Process

I was drawn to the idea of reimagining an artwork about human connection through a medium that imitates it. AI feels like the perfect contradiction, something trying to be human, trying to feel, but always one step removed. Is this real art, or is it art wrapped in plastic? I admire how Magritte effortlessly placed the wrong things in the right places, and I wanted to echo that dissonance. Creating something emotionally charged through technology felt surreal on its own. The image becomes a mirror for our time, where faces are always visible, but identities remain hidden.

Tools

I created this image using Midjourney. I was initially exploring the idea of a portrait of a faceless woman with her head completely wrapped in plastic. After several iterations, I remembered Magritte’s The Lovers and thought it would be interesting to reinterpret it. I used the portraits I had already generated as a base and introduced the idea of two figures instead of one. I kept refining the composition until the kiss felt natural and the faces remained just visible enough. One technique I often use to achieve specific textures like plastic is feeding Midjourney a direct reference image of the texture rather than relying solely on descriptive prompts. This tends to produce much more accurate results.