'ALL BUT HUMAN' at Gallery FUMI imagines a future where craft and code coexist

Gallery FUMI is hosting ALL BUT HUMAN: A Conversation Between AI and the Handmade, a collaborative exhibition with Louise Alexander Gallery and Fellowship, from March 27 – May 10, 2025, at its Mayfair space in London, UK. In an era where technology and craft intersect, ALL BUT HUMAN explores the evolving dialogue between human-made objects and machine-generated art. The ongoing design exhibition brings together two contrasting yet interconnected creative processes—traditional craftsmanship and AI-driven imagery—highlighting how each reshapes our perception of identity, authorship and artistic expression.

Louise Alexander Gallery and Fellowship showcase Roope Rainisto's REWORLD series, a visually striking body of work that delves into themes of identity, perception and reality in the age of artificial intelligence. Through AI-generated imagery, Rainisto constructs alternative worlds where the familiar is reframed, offering a surreal yet thought-provoking look at the merging of self and society. REWORLD questions what it means to create in a world where technology amplifies and obscures individuality, pushing us to reconsider our visual and cultural narratives.

Rainisto's process uses machine learning, trained on vast visual archives, to transform the everyday into uncanny compositions that feel at once implausible and deeply resonant. His work reflects the disorientation and fluidity of identity in a collective digital age, probing the impact of AI on aesthetics, communication and cultural memory.

Alongside, FUMI presents a selection of handcrafted works that celebrate materiality, human touch and the beauty of imperfection. Pieces like London-based designer Charlotte Kingsnorth’s Land Before Time, British designer Max Lamb’s sculpted polystyrene furniture designs and Berlin based Finnish designer Tuomas Markunpoika’s Contra Naturam challenge the lines between the "organic and the artificial, the handmade and the industrial, permanence and ephemerality," as the show’s press release conveys.

Some of the other showcased works at the group exhibition include British artist Allan Collins’ Scylla bench and Charybdis stool design; London based innovative material designer Jie Wu’s Summer Solstice and the Ear Chair by Voukenas Petrides, a collaborative design studio founded in Athens, Greece, by Greek designer Andreas Voukenas and American architect Steve Petrides.

Together, these two perspectives, "one generated, the other shaped by hand", form a conversation about creativity’s shifting nature. Not as opposites, but as points on a continuum, they reflect a broadening field of expression where digital intelligence and human skill coalesce.

Referencing science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who, according to FUMI, "Explored the blending of extraordinary abilities into a single greater intelligence," ALL BUT HUMAN: A Conversation Between AI and the Handmade imagines a future where craft and code enrich one another. The exhibition invites reflection on how digital and physical forms of making intersect, evolve and redefine the creative process.

"At a time when AI-generated imagery is rapidly evolving, ALL BUT HUMAN invites reflection on how these digital and physical forms of creation interact, collide and reframe our understanding of authorship, process and artistic intention," mentions the contemporary design and art gallery's press release.