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Photo by Heather Hazzan
Travis LeRoy Southworth (b. 1979, Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American
conceptual artist working from the premise that every image is a system rather than a singular picture. He treats the operations that produce images, from retouching gestures to interface symbols and corrective language, as the medium itself. His work preserves correction, absence, and repair as evidence of touch, labor, and judgment. In doing so, every image becomes a history rather than a seamless surface.
Southworth's solo exhibitions have been featured in prominent venues such as Below Grand NYC, Undercurrent, Freight + Volume, and Mixed Greens. Additionally, his work has been part of group exhibitions at the Zurich Kunsthalle, The Museum of Contemporary Digital Art, The Trinity Church Museum, The Drawing Center, The Chicago Cultural Center, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts. His work has been written about in the New York Times, Artsy, Basler Zeitung, and Art Slant. Southworth holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of Arizona.
Southworth’s series Detouched involving image manipulation and portraiture received a Fellowship in Photography from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) in 2010. He also participated in a residency in Switzerland, that involved a project with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2013. It was here Southworth became inspired by the colliding of subatomic particles to find hidden ones. In early 2013 he wrote a paper about the possibility of ‘colliding’ different types of digital images to form new ones, predicting the development of AI imagery. In 2017, Southworth began researching blockchain technology and machine learning in 2019. He contributed to the beta-testing of the SuperRare as well as Playform, an early website allowing artists to use artificial intelligence imagining tools.
Works in which Southworth has used generative AI can be viewed here.
Contact: travisleroy [at] gmail [dot] com
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Southworth's solo exhibitions have been featured in prominent venues such as Below Grand NYC, Undercurrent, Freight + Volume, and Mixed Greens. Additionally, his work has been part of group exhibitions at the Zurich Kunsthalle, The Museum of Contemporary Digital Art, The Trinity Church Museum, The Drawing Center, The Chicago Cultural Center, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts. His work has been written about in the New York Times, Artsy, Basler Zeitung, and Art Slant. Southworth holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of Arizona.
Southworth’s series Detouched involving image manipulation and portraiture received a Fellowship in Photography from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) in 2010. He also participated in a residency in Switzerland, that involved a project with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2013. It was here Southworth became inspired by the colliding of subatomic particles to find hidden ones. In early 2013 he wrote a paper about the possibility of ‘colliding’ different types of digital images to form new ones, predicting the development of AI imagery. In 2017, Southworth began researching blockchain technology and machine learning in 2019. He contributed to the beta-testing of the SuperRare as well as Playform, an early website allowing artists to use artificial intelligence imagining tools.
Works in which Southworth has used generative AI can be viewed here.
Contact: travisleroy [at] gmail [dot] com
CV Instagram Twitter
@2026 Travis LeRoy Southworth