A firm Art Gorgeous favourite ( and cover star of Issue 9), Gretchen Andrew has long delighted us with her glitter-dusted hacks on power, visibility, and the art market itself. Now the London and LA-based artist turns her gaze to the cult of digital perfection with Facetune Portraits: Universal Beauty, a series of oil paintings recently acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art that are made with custom robotics that physically embed popular AI beauty filters onto canvas. The result? Portraits that are as alluring as they are unsettling, exposing the tug-of-war between how we really look and how algorithms say we should. Here we chat with the artist about her journey from hacker to painter, the seductive pull of AI beauty, and what’s next on her glitter-strewn horizon.
For those new to your work, can you share a brief origin story, how you first found your way into the art world, and the key moments or mentors that shaped your practice in those early years?
I think what holds many artists back more than anything else are the limiting beliefs they carry about themselves and the art world they long to be part of. When I decided to become an artist, and I very much mean decided, because the choice came long before I had any connections, skills, or even a clear understanding of what that really meant—I defined an artist as someone celebrated and rewarded for being fully themselves.
From the beginning, my work and career carried an unapologetic amount of naked ambition. My early projects were equal parts institutional critique and “fake it till you make it” performance. Over time, the affirmations I lived by (“The art world is full of great people, and I always work with them”) became manifestations. That shift freed me to focus my creative energy not only on making powerful work but also on building the ecosystem of professional and personal support that sustains it.
Mentorship has played a huge role in bringing me to this moment of acquisition. I especially want to acknowledge Penny Slinger, who helped me rewrite my inner narrative by addressing my deep need to be taken seriously.
What inspired you to create your latest body of work Facetune Portraits: Universal Beauty, and how did the idea of merging custom robotics with oil paint first click for you?
I had been going through a personal transformation, wrestling with the tension between who I felt I truly was and who I was expected or told to be. I wanted to create a portrait of that tension, a painting that could hold both our authentic selves and the forces that insist we should be different, whether those pressures come from society, family, algorithms, or increasingly, artificial intelligence.
I have always admired artists like Giacometti and Frank Auerbach, whose portraits capture the instability of an image while still holding the certainty of likeness. I knew these works needed to embody that same battle and that same duality. Within each portrait, I wanted parts of the process to be deeply human, painterly, and organic, and other parts to feel robotic, scarring, and even borderline violent.
By using a robot to apply the same beauty filters people use digitally, I have been able to expose the normally invisible scars of social media. Instead of smoothing imperfections, the robot carves, cuts, and inflicts wounds. These marks carry an entirely different painterly and emotional weight than if I had painted them by hand.
These works are about the pressure to be beautiful, the longing to be accepted by the algorithm, the desire to conform and literally have the same face as everyone else, and the fear of standing out as an individual. They confront the ways artificial intelligence and algorithms amplify these pressures while also acknowledging that such anxieties long predate today’s technologies.
Can you walk us through how a Facetune Portrait actually comes to life, from the first digital tweak to the final brushstroke?
Facetune Portraits begin with digital enhancements using popular apps like Facetune and BodyTune. The apps apply AI-driven modifications to the original photograph, creating a “facetuned” version that visualizes algorithmic ideals of beauty.
Next, I prepare the canvas with an all-white underpainting, adding texture and a painterly foundation. I then print the original image in oil paint (created by MatrLabs), creating a base layer for the robotic intervention.
Using an XY-axis drawing robot, the AI modifications are physically applied to the wet oil painting. The robot translates the differences between the original and the AI-altered photo into messy, expressive brushstrokes, highlighting the alterations rather than blending them seamlessly. While the algorithm dictates the shapes, I maintain control over painterly decisions such as speed, pressure, and brush choice, creating a hybrid process where human and machine collaborate.
Renaissance patrons used portraits to idealise power; today, we edit selfies to idealise ourselves. Do you see Facetune Portraits as updating that tradition or cheekily satirising our algorithmically defined identities?
Throughout history, the portrait has always reflected what we value as a society at a given moment. One of my favorite examples is Oliver Cromwell asking to be painted with all of his warts, because he wanted to show himself as pure, honest, and straightforward, in stark contrast to the royalty that came before him.
The big question, then, is what do we value today, given how prevalently we use filters. What I see is a desire not only to be beautiful but also to be accepted by the algorithm as much as by our peers. More than anything, it is the desire not to stand out, not to be different, not to be individual. These filters give everyone the same face, and in giving everyone the same face, they allow us to hide behind a mask.
Having lived with Facetune Portraits from concept to exhibition, what’s been your biggest takeaway about how beauty standards are literally coded into software? Are you more intrigued by how tech shapes our aspirations, or by the way we so willingly filter and code ourselves?
There have always been beauty standards and pressures, but today we are confronted with bodies and faces that quite literally do not exist. I would venture to say that the majority of bodies we see on a daily basis do not physically exist in reality. Our expectations of ourselves and others are becoming deeply skewed within this image culture, as we aspire to bodies that require extreme contortions in the physical world. People now bring these app- and filter-generated images to plastic surgeons and ask to be made to look like them. This is how we get things like “duck lips,” which exist because these images are designed to be seen from the front rather than the side. We are prioritizing a flat image culture over how bodies are actually seen and experienced in real life.
Another striking shift is that, while beauty standards have always existed, the same set of algorithmic priorities is now being applied internationally, across diverse bodies, compressing them into a homogenized single standard. Because of AI, algorithms, and social media, this is happening on a massive scale and at extraordinary speed.
I am intrigued by our acquiescence to this kind of compression and control. At the same time, I published a paper with the British Computer Society for the Electronic Visualisation in the Arts conference that demonstrated how conformity to these filters actually increases the likelihood of exposure on social media. This raises the question of how much choice we really have in the matter. Last year, I worked with influencers in Berlin to explore the pressure to use filters as a strategy to gain visibility in fashion, music, and other cultural conversations. These filters have become a required element in playing the algorithmic game of exposure.
What’s your take on AI in the art world right now? Do you see it as a creative collaborator, a disruptive threat, or something in between?
I think AI is extremely boring. There is so much talk in culture, and especially in the art world, about AI as some great explosion of creativity. Yet in my daily life what I see is the opposite. AI is increasingly making everything the same. Websites are the same, translations are the same, cocktail menus are the same, emails are the same. AI is not bringing us a wild eruption of newness, it is enforcing normalization, homogenization, and control.
I wanted to create a body of work that reveals this other side of AI, the side that many of us are already experiencing in our daily lives. This is the same force that gives us all the same face, the same body, and the same set of expectations.
From search-engine hacks to beautification apps, you keep manipulating systems of visibility. Do you think of yourself more as an artist, a hacker, or a cultural strategist, or do you enjoy blurring those roles?
I am passionate about making invisible technologies visible as a way of understanding their impact. I want to find ways to show not only their presence but also their scars. One of the things I am most excited about with the Facetune Portraits is the opportunity to take this conversation beyond the art world and into a broader cultural space.
I have worked with Miss Universe contestants, who are compelling subjects for the Facetune Portraits precisely because they are already so beautiful and come from diverse cultural backgrounds. Yet even they are homogenized and compressed by these algorithms into a single identity. Their individuality is erased, their cultural heritage diminished, and the absurdity heightened by the fact that they are among the most beautiful people in the world.
Working with them as subjects and talking through these dynamics has been a powerful example of how fine art can participate in larger conversations and connect with wider conversations.
After Facetune Portraits, where do you want to take this dialogue between traditional painting and digital culture? Any new experiments already brewing?
There are many ways that AI and algorithms clash with our bodies and the physical world. I am exploring algorithms that make us look younger, as well as algorithms created specifically for men. I recognize that I have done this work a disservice by focusing primarily on women up to this point. This is not just a teenage girl on TikTok problem. It affects men and people of all ages, from Zoom touch-up filters to other appearance-altering tools. I am currently working with an app called Manly to explore the impact on men.
I am also beginning to investigate a series of algorithms known as Nudify. These algorithms can take photos and literally undress people, creating deepfake porn images based on closed images. If we think about Facetune Portraits as working with algorithms that beautify us, the same processes can also expose and violate us. There is a critical conversation to be had about these algorithmic expectations and the pressures they impose.
I am excited to continue working within the same conceptual and technical framework for a long time because I believe there is much to be said about the tension we experience between our bodies and AI’s expectations.
You can find out more about Gretchen and Facetune Portraits: Universal Beauty on her website and on Instagram at @gretchenandrew
