Louis-Paul Caron
Artist
April-May 2026
- AI
- Los Angeles
“At the intersection of reality and the digital, I create a dialogue between painting and artificial intelligence to explore the memory of landscapes lost in the Los Angeles wildfires.”
As a digital artist, I compose images to tell the story of our time. My work is infused with political, ecological, and existential questions. What interests me is making visible what we often prefer to ignore, and confronting our gaze with the world around us.
I grew up between brushes and screens, in a constant back‑and‑forth between classical arts and the digital. During my studies in Digital Arts, I created several animated short films focused on ecology, searching for a form of universal, direct language capable of moving people without detours. My practice then shifted from cinema to painting, still nourished by the use of digital tools. I began by reworking Italian Renaissance paintings from the Louvre using 3D software, as a way to better understand the work of the old masters: their treatment of color, light, and above all, the art of storytelling through composition.
Today, I return to oil painting with the desire to create a dialogue between the gestures of the past and the images of today. In my series Incendie (Fire), I explore a planet in flames: a raw vision of a world on the brink. I try to make beauty and disaster coexist, the calm surface and the latent collapse. I believe in the power of images to unsettle, inspire, and awaken minds.
Louis-Paul Caron is a French digital artist whose work has been exhibited internationally, including at Art Basel, Seoul, New York, Milan, and Dubai. Through video, oil painting, and artificial intelligence, he explores our shifting relationship to nature and climate change, at the intersection of digital art and traditional practices.
Trained in design and digital arts at the Design Academy Eindhoven, his work questions how the climate crisis is transforming the way we see, think, and imagine the future.
Pacific Palisades is an artistic project combining oil painting, artificial intelligence, and digital immersion to explore the memory of vanished places in the age of the climate crisis. Inspired by the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles in January 2025, I began a series of paintings based on Google Street View images of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, now largely destroyed. These frozen views constitute the last visual traces of homes that have since been reduced to ashes.
During the residency in Los Angeles, the project will take on a new dimension through experimental work with AI and the creation of an immersive installation in which the images transform, appear, and fade away like memories in perpetual mutation. In collaboration with Refik Anadol Studio and the Dataland Museum in Los Angeles, the paintings will be analyzed and reinterpreted by generative algorithms to create immersive animations.
Soundscapes recorded on site will be added to anchor the experience in the sensory fabric of the place and heighten the emotional impact of the installation. At the intersection of reality and the digital, I create a dialogue between painting and artificial intelligence to question the memory of landscapes lost to the Los Angeles wildfires.
I chose Los Angeles, and more specifically the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, to develop this project because it embodies both the idealism of the American Dream and the contradictions of contemporary capitalism, now severely tested by the climate crisis. Often perceived as an idyllic neighborhood, a symbol of success and comfort, Pacific Palisades was heavily destroyed by the 2025 wildfires. This context makes it a deeply resonant site of exploration, where the memory of vanished places intersects with the critique of a model on the verge of collapse.
Los Angeles is also a unique crossroads where climate change hits hard, with droughts, wildfires, and rising temperatures, even as the region hosts some of the world’s largest data centers. This convergence of ecology and technology makes the city particularly relevant to my work.
The project will be carried out in collaboration with Refik Anadol Studio, pioneers of sustainable AI in immersive art, notably with the opening this year of Dataland, the first museum dedicated to artificial intelligence in Los Angeles. This exceptional context makes the city an ideal place to intertwine painting, artificial intelligence, and immersive installation to explore the memory of vanished landscapes and their potential rebirth.
In partnership with
Danae
https://www.danae.io/
Refik Anadol Studio
Fidji Simo
Born and raised in Sète, France, Simo is CEO and Chair of Instacart, the North American leader in online grocery; Board Member at OpenAI and Shopify, and former Head of Facebook at Meta, where she spent a decade. With more than 15 years of experience leading some of the world’s most innovative companies, Simo brings a unique understanding of the role technology can play in shifting culture around the world to this residency program. An artist herself, she also brings a passion for the intersection of creativity, artistry, and technology. From conception to funding, Simo’s patronage will bring this unique opportunity to life for eight residents over the next two years.