TRANSHUMAN VISIONS – abstract artworks

Transhuman. Transitional human. According to followers of transhumanism, it will produce a supreme and perfect human being. Improved by biotechnology, gene manipulation, brain transplantation … But isn’t it at the same time a huge threat? Are we sure to be in control of what „progress” speeding in a pure madness, maybe to our own destruction? Our prompt annihilation? We are not just threatened by the „transitional human being”. We are at the same time going away from humanity the way we know it.

The problem is real, tangible.

We are standing on the threshold of another, but not necessarily friendly to us world.

And this is why it is so important to show the danger in a plastic form. TRANSHUMAN PORTRAITSof Jan Astner are a warning, they activate our non-verbal imagination. They stimulate our way of thinking; they are a cry of despair of a human being trapped in the snares of his own inventions.

Transhumanism in abstract artworks

Jan Astner paints his TRANSHUMAN PORTRAITS as abstract artworks, visions of the future. It is an ongoing project as new compositions are constantly being created in this series. These are not strictly speaking portraits. More sketches of a vision of the future. Notes from the dehumanized, technologically reconfigured future. Abstract artworks, a vision of the future where the face will disappear, the way we visualize it, how we perceive it. TRANSHUMAN PORTRAITS are sketches of something that is no longer a face, but rather a form of transition to another, yet unknown reality. Jan Astner turned the portrait into a vision of something new, different.

The name of TRANSHUMAN PORTRAITS, however, suggests that they are portraits. The symbolism of the applied artistic forms also refers to them. A few curls, the shadow of lips, the outline of eyes. But we see completely melted shapes in an almost abstract drawing. The use of colors, metallic, shimmering, changeable, almost always contrasts with the background.

Sometimes the background texture literally refers to the human body, human skin, human fingerprints. TRANSHUMAN PORTRAITS are abstract artworks of something unknown. It is a vision of a transhuman human being, a transitional man.