Serge Petit likes making jokes about how artificial intelligence is stealing artists’ jobs. An artist himself, he has been traveling for years in search of a new discourse in his craft. Years of experiments have led him to see art in a different light.

As we start chatting, he tells me that the artistic community is not ready for AI and argues that no one is. To demonstrate his point, Serge takes the famous example of Boris Eldagsen, winner of the Sony World Photography Award 2023 for his picture “Pseudomnesia: The Electrician.” Eldagsen refused the award after revealing that his picture was created using artificial intelligence. Sometimes we cannot tell the difference between human and AI-generated work. But AI can also do things humans cannot.

Serge’s main line of work is sculpture. He told me that as a cemetery artist, he lost a lot of contracts due to the advancements of AI—about thirty contracts, he said, lost to firms based on the other side of the world. Why? Because they are cheaper and still produce good-quality work. But where’s the artist’s vision in that?

“We must be more creative than AI. I have lost contracts because machines can make monuments [tombstones] as well as any of us.”

The conversation goes on, and he tells me about the other mediums he uses. One of them is writing; another is photography. He says he has developed a way to stay ahead of artificial intelligence; he calls his technique “solar paintings.”

Solar painting is a complex method that uses the sun’s rays to create natural and ephemeral pictures. The tools needed are mirrors, reflectors, and colored filters. The requirements are blue skies, prisms, and intense sunlight.

With the filters, Serge manipulates light to make it iridescent. The light illuminates the details he chooses, creating poetic images in situ—street art without damage to the walls. These fleeting images can be captured and reproduced on screen and in print.

The process offers an innovative aesthetic perspective, combining the play of natural light with a variety of themes: mythology, history, religion, and the environment. In Serge’s work, art and technology collide to create aesthetic beauty and ecological awareness. This contemporary technique has two key advantages, complementary to each other. It is environmentally friendly and in harmony with nature. And the artist has one: AI does not know how to make that yet.

He says many works inspired him. Unconsciously, his fascination with light started in 2004 when he and a colleague, the artist Gabriel Rosskamp, were commissioned to create a sculpture for the entrance hall of the Theodor-Wenzel-Werk clinic in Berlin. They designed a stabile, an abstract sculpture meant to have a soothing effect on patients and visitors. Placed in the atrium, the stabilizer was illuminated with natural light.

“Once I saw the order completed and installed,” says Serge, “the virus of light infected me.”

Among his other inspirations is the Basilica of Saint-Denis, designed by Abbé Suger, which he described as a “temple of light,” as well as the sunlight in the south of France and Italy.

“The rays of light from the meridians in Italy and France also enriched my exploration of this field, enabling me to work with light, teaching me to synchronize the chosen media with precise moments of sunlight.”

The turning point for him was seeing the rounded tomb of Newgrange (Ireland) and its mystery: once a year, on the winter solstices, a shaft of light enters a strategically positioned window and lights up the 18.9-meter-long corridor leading to the chamber.

It was this discovery that prompted the artist to use solar radiation as a creative tool. “Since then, solar energy has enabled me to interact with matter in a unique way, applying colors with precision and gentleness, exploring materials to reveal their vitality.”

His first experiments were on large historical and religious sites in Northern Catalonia almost ten years ago, in the abbey of Saint Marie d'Arles-sur-Tech. His tests also took him to the chapel of Saint-Guilhem de Combret, the priory of Sainte-Marie de Serrabona in Boule-d'Amont, and other villages of the region.

“The Romanesque architecture that is so prevalent in Northern Catalonia allowed me to experiment with and explore these ‘plays of light’ on different historical monuments and to research the relationship between solar light sources and darkness.”

Serge gave himself some rules. He calls them his “self-imposed requirements”: the whole process must be based on a total equivalence between the effects of the projected light and the color on the support affected by the radiation, what he sees in the camera, and the final print. His work is almost unedited; only the framing is sometimes adjusted. By applying these limitations, he says he can guarantee the authenticity of the process and his work.

If solar paintings are very different from the works of art we studied in school, we can safely assume that they will become more and more popular around the world and will no doubt become an established artistic expression. As Serge says, “The experience of solar paintings offers a unique sensory awakening, inviting both the artist and the public to see the world in a different light.”