Exhibition · 2023

The False Faces of Reality / The Lies of the Internet

Rege Gallery, Tihany

In my own words

I generated portraits with artificial intelligence and hung them on the wall as though they were true. People believed them — and that was precisely the point.

I wanted visitors to walk out doubting their own eyes, because in this decade that doubt is not cynicism, it is hygiene. We had conversations in that gallery I will not forget: people arguing about which face was real while standing in front of two fakes. This was 2023, before everyone had an opinion about all this. It felt urgent then. It feels overdue now.

Gallery

Works from the exhibition

A man and a woman kiss on a city street, the crowd blurred behind them.
Black and white: a young woman on the shore, her hair thrown across the frame by the wind.
A mud-covered face rises just above the waterline, only the eyes clear of the surface.
A young woman looks out of a moving train window, hair lifted by the draught.
A woman turns her face up into low golden sunlight, eyes closed.
A woman stands in a hazy desert with mountains behind her, turned away from the camera.
A man in a red suit stands beside a red sports car in front of a red wall.
A figure stands on a mirror-flat surface between orange ground and blue sky, reflected below.
Two women in silver and yellow hooded coats lean together with closed eyes.
A face painted with geometric lines, framed by two hands.
Two women kiss on a street at dusk, palm trees and an apartment block behind them.
A woman in a period gown looks at her own reflection in an ornate gilded mirror.
A man in a beige suit and striped orange tie stands before a low orange building.
Black and white: an eye, a face and another eye appear through three round openings in a wall.
An astronaut sits in an armchair in a decaying, once-grand ballroom.
A figure in a yellow coat and a white rabbit mask stands alone in a ruined theatre.
A man in sunglasses sits in a car behind stacks of banknotes piled on the dashboard.
A bride in a red and gold embroidered dress and heavy jewellery, against a dark ground.
A woman walks away across desert dunes at sunset, her skirt catching the light.

© Norbert Bánhalmi / BANHALMI. All rights reserved. Images from the BANHALMI archive, 1999–2026.

Press & media

← All exhibitions

Read how this work connects to its period in the oeuvre.

The work within the oeuvre

Why it belongs here

How it connects to the wider work

I generated portraits with artificial intelligence and hung them on the wall as though they were true.

Period of the oeuvre

V2023–presentCommunity, education and public presence

Read about this period

Follow the related records to explore the people, projects and themes around this work.

Related projects and archive records

Period of the oeuvre · V

Community, education and public presence

This exhibition belongs here because of the question behind it, the photographs it brought together and the traces it left in public.

Archive overviewCommunity, education and public presence Press and moving imageThe False Faces of Reality / The Lies of the Internet Curatorial dossierResearch context