Ronen Tanchum: SYNTHLORA: Solo Project
Ronen Tanchum’s projects use robotics, artificial intelligence, sensors, and real-time algorithms to construct evolving perceptual environments. His work moves between digital and physical realms, treating technology as material to surface behavioral patterns, environmental systems, and emotional responses. He collaborates with museums, technology platforms, and cultural institutions to develop site-specific installations that invite reflection, interaction, and presence. He leads multidisciplinary teams in creating artworks that reshape our understanding of nature, machines, and human experience. He also lectures on generative aesthetics, digital ethics, and the role of artists in shaping technological culture.
BONIAN SPACE is pleased to collaborate with Galerie Met to present SYNTHLORA, the latest solo project by Ronen Tanchum. Centered on a series of synthetic plants that “grow” from electronic waste, the exhibition foregrounds the artist’s most recent explorations in generative systems and digital ecologies. Through the reconfiguration and transposition of obsolete technological materials, Tanchum constructs an “electronic herbarium” that exists beyond the boundaries of the natural world, allowing images to operate within a state of continuous transformation between technical logic and the metaphor of life. The exhibition will open on April 11, 2026, and remain on view through May 9.
Rather than a representation of natural form, SYNTHLORA (2026) points toward a generative process driven by algorithmic mechanisms. Within this system, “growth” is simulated through code, “mutation” is computationally produced, and “structure” emerges from programmatic logic rather than biological evolution. Beginning with electronic waste, the artist transforms discarded technological fragments into visually suggestive units, enabling materials that have lost their original function to regain potential for organization and extension under a new set of rules.
Drawing on the visual language of botany, Tanchum constructs a parallel taxonomy within the series. Stem-like structures, filamentous extensions, and “floral” forms no longer refer to organic life, but are instead recomposed and redefined through synthetic logic. Each work operates both as a discrete “specimen” and as part of an ongoing generative continuum: what is recorded is not a species that once existed, but rather entities constructed outside the framework of empirical reality.
Within the works, this generative system unfolds in a state that oscillates between control and unpredictability. By establishing initial conditions and operational parameters, the artist enables forms to evolve autonomously within the system, producing visual outcomes that cannot be fully predetermined. These seemingly fragile and vital structures simultaneously evoke botanical growth while revealing their constructed and computational nature, situating “life” in a condition that remains unresolved between the natural and the technological.
At this level, SYNTHLORA (2026) can be understood as an articulation of transformational processes: from waste to form, from code to life, and from system to generation. The works do not attempt to replicate nature; rather, they dismantle and reconfigure its structures and logics, effectively rewriting what we understand as “nature.” The image thus ceases to function as a representation of a pre-existing object and instead becomes the visible outcome of generative operations, maintaining an open and fluid state through continuous computation.
As a forward-oriented “electronic herbarium,” SYNTHLORA (2026) redefines the notion of preservation, shifting it from the documentation of what already exists to the cataloguing of potential forms. In this context, the archive no longer points to the past, but operates as a projection of future ecologies: a system of life emerging within the digital domain, where life is no longer cultivated, but continuously constructed at the intersection of algorithm and material.
Ronen Tanchum’s practice spans generative art, immersive environments, and interactive technologies, informed by a multidisciplinary background that includes computational design, software development, and 3D simulation. He approaches technology as a malleable material through which behavioral patterns, environmental systems, and perceptual experiences can be made manifest. Within his work, systems are not static tools but continuously operating generative frameworks, allowing artworks to unfold dynamic relationships between the digital and the physical, and to continually reshape our understanding of nature, technology, and human experience.