headgear
Series of portraits examines digital sculptures as models for painting from direct observation.
T
his series follows the essence of my two-stage process. Stage one ‘left-side-of-the-brain’ construction of a referent. Stage two ‘right-side-of-the-brain’ observation-based impression of the constructed referent.
Above: Pawn, 2022, digital animation, HD video.
The paintings have all the stylistic and mannerist signs of an observation-based painting. Because the image is already solved, the painting process can focus on the visual impression, on mechanics of the brushwork, on projecting style and attitude, and communicating certain aesthetic sensibility. Its presence has the quality of lightness and immediacy no matter how complex or outlandish the actual referent could be.
Above, from left: Pawn, 2022, still from a digital animation, 2K video, 1632 x 1740 px, Pawn, 2022, oil on panel, 30 x 39 cm.
Above, from left: Bishop, 2022, still from a digital animation, 2K video, 1632 x 1740 px, Bishop, 2022, oil on panel, 23 x 26 cm.
Above, from left: Above, from top: Knight, 2022, still from a digital animation, 2K video, 1632 x 1740 px, Knight, 2022, oil on panel, 30 x 39 cm.
To an unwitting observer the image might look as if painted from nature. It becomes an icon because it’s a real symbol without a real referent. It’s a simulacrum. Thus it questions the nature of reality and our perception of that reality.
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Above, from top: Untitled, 2022, still from a digital animation, 2K video, 1632 x 1740 px, Untitled, 2022, oil on panel, 25 x 30 cm.
Above, from left: Slice, 2022, still from a digital animation, 2K video, 1632 x 1740 px, Slice, 2022, oil on canvas, 45 x 60 cm.
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Above: 48 Metahuman Portraits, 2023, proposed installation view of work in progress, digital photomontage, 33 paintings, oil on canvas, each 50 x 75 cm, Fabrikken, Atelier #9
This series serves also as a preamble for another project. A famous series by Gerhard Richter ‘48 Portraits’ has been re-staged many times. I plan to paint 48 monochromatic portraits of completely synthetic humans. For fun I’d re-stage postures and clothing of Richter’s models. Only my humans are not heroes from the past, but synthetic metahumans. I will paint them from direct observation of the models displayed in 3D space of a VR headset. The painter peers inside the VR headset. Then the painter lifts the VR headset up, and sets a brush stroke or two on a canvas. Then the painter looks again into VR headset. And so on... As illustrated below.
Above: VR Painter, 2022, charcoal on paper, series of 40 drawings, 21 x 30 cm, compiled as digital animation, 4K vertical video.
