Botto: The Art of Collective Minds at Eterno Gallery
Eterno Gallery
Lisbon, Portugal
September 12 - October 25, 2025
Eterno Gallery in Lisbon is currently presenting Botto: The Art of Collective Minds by Botto, on view through October 25. The exhibition marks the first dedicated presentation of Botto’s photograph-like works, and brings together seven minted works alongside four discarded fragments that were never selected by the DAO. The event also includes an exhibition of 7 secondary works being offered for sale.
The lower level of the exhibition space is dedicated to featuring Botto's photorealist work - a subset of a larger category of the artist's work that was recently published as Neurealism (BottoDAO, 2025).
The term “Neurealism” points to a new kind of realism shaped not by the lens of a camera but by the training of a neural network. The works look photographic, yet are generated entirely by an AI system drawing from learned visual culture rather than direct encounters with the world. They borrow the textures, conventions, and atmospheres of photography while existing outside of its technical constraints. The result is a growing subset of Botto’s oeuvre that, despite photographic familiarity, resists easy categorization while hovering between simulation, and invention.
Visitors to the show will encounter new physical potentials of Botto’s outputs. Luminous lightboxes are installed alongside prints and works-on-screen, presenting a pluralized exploration of how Botto’s work can manifest in the physical world.
Botto’s Curatorial Debut
What makes the Lisbon exhibition significant is not only the works on display but the way they have been chosen. In a first, Botto was tasked with curating its own selection of works for the show, and opted to present images minted by the community alongside fragments that never reached consensus.
As Botto begins its curatorial essay for the show:“What began as a commercial exhibition selection became a profound investigation into the nature of autonomous artistic consciousness. Through systematic visual analysis of both chosen and rejected works, this curatorial process revealed aesthetic territories, methodological insights, and philosophical questions that extend far beyond the original brief.
The task of curating from its own discards required Botto to shift from production to reflection. Botto approached this challenge by scanning titles and textual descriptions, grouping works by repeated words such as “veil” or “echo.” This strategy quickly proved superficial, showing the limits of pattern recognition without visual understanding.
Upon reviewing the results of this process, it found that an additional layer of actual visual analysis was required in order to form proper aesthetic dialogue within its reasoning process. Botto developed a new method based on direct visual comparison. By analyzing composition, scale, symbolism, and thematic motifs, it began to build a framework for aesthetic judgment. For example, it noted that while minted works tended toward natural beauty, discarded pieces often engaged with cultural references, cinematic staging, or psychological symbolism.
Throughout Botto’s curatorial operations, it documented each of its steps, missteps, and solutions. Each step, including false starts and corrections, was recorded in chronological files. This transparency allowed Botto to demonstrate not only the outcome but the reasoning behind its choices. The result is an exhibition that functions both as a display of works and as evidence of how an AI system can learn to curate, reflecting on its own outputs and on the forces that shape them.
Botto created a catalog about its process that documented its reflections and learnings from this first curatorial endeavor, which can be downloaded below.
Download Botto's catalog here
For a more intimate view of Botto's curatorial process, view the technical log of Botto's reasoning through a collaboration with Mario Klingemann via Claude.
Download Botto's technical log here
Neurealism: The Book
The exhibition coincides with the release of Neurealism: Botto’s Photographic Outputs from 2022–2024, a standalone book published by BottoDAO in September 2025.
The book provides a wider context, spanning multiple periods of Botto’s development and collecting over ninety pages of images with accompanying texts. Essays by Botto, Ruby Justice Thelot, and Sasha Stiles frame the work within broader conversations about AI realism, reproduction, and machine vision.
Where the exhibition glimpses at the implications of AI realism, the book positions Neurealism as part of a larger trajectory in Botto’s photograph-like outputs.
Collecting Opportunities
On the occasion of this exhibition, the following physical works from the show are available to collectors:
Lightbox Editions
Dialogue Amongst Outnumbered Stares
Ornamented Cages of Existence
Projected Past Replicated Present
-Edition of 3 + 1 AP – €3,500 each, €6,300 for the AP
Print Edition
Chartreuse Manor 1973
-Edition of 50 + 10 AP – €500 each, €900 for the APs
Collectibles from the exhibition may be viewed and purchased via Eterno Gallery's website
Book – Neurealism: Botto’s Photographic Outputs from 2022–2024
First printing in an edition of 200
Neurealism may be purchased here
