“I personally think every artist has to just explore this technology, because it’s a paradigm shift,” says Matthew Stone of the proliferation of AI in an artistic context. Technology has long been woven into his practice, employed to create patchworked forms in his fantasy scenes, including the symbolism-rich artwork for FKA twigs’ sophomore album Magdalene.

In his latest body of work, the intersection of digital tools and manual techniques is nudged further into the spotlight. Virtual Paintings, held at Unit London, is his first solo UK show since 2016, and sees him debut pieces that fold AI into his process for the first time.

Stone’s new workflow involved inputting his past pieces as image references into an early access version of Open AI’s Dall-E 2 (though he describes the system as “very much a corporate version of a tool that should be free to use”, and instead recommends Stable Diffusion). He then took the AI’s raw output and incorporated the generated images into wider pieces, created with his usual 3D modelling software, by using them as brushstrokes and textures.

As with his past works, these new compositions feature textures, spaces and figures in motion. His characteristic digital brushstrokes find themselves smeared, while the bodies and faces that inhabit the artfully chaotic studio environments are caught mid-action in half time. The theatricality of the pieces pays homage to the creative circles he grew up in as an artist, notably the time he spent living and working in squats as part of a collective.

“People coming together and creating social environments and being at play, and there being a sense of deep and radical acceptance of people manifesting exactly who they are, is very beautiful to me,” he explains. “There’s lots of references to historical painting and stuff like that, but I guess I’m always wanting to mix up some of that grandeur with an aesthetic sense that is contemporary and fun and optimistic.”

Stone’s digital portraits line the studio spaces represented in his pieces. It recalls the use of mise-en-abyme by prominent figures who buried their own pieces within wider scenes, such as Roy Lichtenstein with his series Artist’s Studio. Just like Lichtenstein, Stone directly references Matisse in this new body of work, as well as Nicolas Poussin’s masterpiece Dance to the Music of Time.

Above all, the transitory energy of the works reflects the state of flux permeating the world of visual arts and creativity, as technology rapidly transforms everything from modes of production to value attribution. Stone is intimately aware of both, and feels more artists should be engaging with the debates brought about by AI in an image making context.

“I think what’s really interesting about AI [is] there’s a kind of natural conversation around effort and what determines good art. And I think that there’s this pervasive idea that things that take a long time, things that rely on a skillset that took a long time to develop, are inherently valuable,” he says. (Arguments of this nature aside, he was surprised to find that using AI still involved a long process.)

He’s interested in changes to “the way that we think about creativity once high quality image making is put in the hands of everybody, so the democratising of image making in a sense, in the same way that camera phones have made everybody a photographer. And I think that we all know that still there’s lots of room for excellence in that field and interesting creative productions.

“I think that when the creative industries are so competitive and often underpaid and underfunded, there’s an incentive for creative people to want to gatekeep the opportunities and their identities as unique and special individuals. I think that’s totally understandable because it is a challenging environment, but at the same time, I really believe that there is an abundance of creativity and creative opportunity that can be in the same way, referring back to the iPhone, a democratisation. I don’t think anything is at threat on that level, in terms of the potential for human creativity to shine.”

Matthew Stone: Virtual Paintings is on display at Unit London until September 10; unitlondon.com