British photographer and artist Rankin returns with his second exhibition built entirely from artificial intelligence, opening at A. Galerie in Paris on 10 September and running until 31 October.
Titled La F.AI.M, a play on "AI" and the French word for "hunger", the exhibition explores the force that drives artists to keep making work at a moment when a machine can generate almost any image imaginable. Over the past several years, Rankin has immersed himself in producing thousands of AI-generated images, building one of the most extensive bodies of AI work by any contemporary photographer. What surprised him most, he says, wasn't what the technology could do, but what it couldn't.
The deeper he went into the process, the more he came to see AI not as a replacement for creativity, but as a kind of mirror held up to it. A machine can imitate almost any visual language and compress centuries of art history into a single prompt, but it has no memory, no doubt, and no hunger of its own, it only predicts. That absence is the starting point for the whole exhibition, and the reason behind its title.
Running throughout the show is a recurring motif: the skull. Like photography itself, Rankin sees it as a trace of presence, something that lingers after the moment has passed. Appearing again and again across the images, the skulls speak to the exhibition's bigger questions: what remains after memory fades, what survives beyond the act of creation and why certain images continue to haunt us long after they're made. Depending on the piece, they gesture toward mortality, beauty, anatomy, or simply the passage of time.
Moving across portraiture, sculpture, fashion, mythology, religion, art history and photography, the exhibition doesn't try to settle the question of whether AI can replace artists. Instead, Rankin asks a different one: what remains uniquely human when a machine can generate any image at all? His answer isn't found in the finished picture, but in the need to make it in the first place.
La F.AI.M also marks Rankin's second exhibition with gallerist Arnaud Adida, one of the first to show his photography and a long-time collaborator and champion of his work. This time, though, the gallery walls will hold no photographs at all and instead only work generated with AI, with every image in the show personally selected and curated by Adida. Rankin has described the exhibition as a second roll of the dice, following the mixed reception of his first AI show, FAIK OFF, in London in 2025, and credits Adida's continued trust as central to making this second attempt possible.
Accompanying the exhibition is a limited-edition magazine that will be available to pick up at the gallery, featuring a personal letter from Rankin reflecting on the making of the show, his relationship with Adida, and his own uneasy, curious relationship with AI.
Alongside the exhibition, Rankin will bring his celebrated RankinLIVE portrait experience to Paris on opening day, running from 10am to 6pm. Participants can book a 20-minute session to be photographed by Rankin himself, before reviewing a digital contact sheet and selecting their favourite image to be turned into an authenticated A4 print and delivered straight to their door, along with a social-media-sized digital file. It's a fitting, human counterpoint to an exhibition all about the one thing AI still can't replicate: the hunger to create. Slots are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis here.
La F.AI.M by Rankin
10 September – 31 October 2026
A. Galerie, 4 Rue Léonce Reynaud, 75116 Paris
Private View: Thursday 10 September, 6pm
RankinLIVE Paris
Thursday 10 September, 10am – 6pm
A. Galerie, Paris
Book here
