Digital art

I am a digital artist who uses his own photo’s to create all sorts of graphics, be it photo-illustrations (compositing) or digital illustrations. But I also start to use my photos like they are (after some post-processing). Categorization is still kinda difficult I would say, but we will get there at some point.

Last Day of Winter / First Wood / Near that Hill – exhibited during Hungerwinter/Romantique as part of #48HNK 2022

These are 4 large sized artworks (almost A0) and are all hand made prints/transfers made from digital files. The technique is similar to what is done with photocopies or laser prints with lithography but not the same.

My theme was Hungerwinter / Romantique – here is more info on the story behind the works and how it fitted in the main theme for #48HNK2022.

I was very satisfied with the result and the reactions of the public. For now this is the way I will print for some time to come. I will, however, try to find other ways to make handcrafted prints based on digital files. Maybe it is time for a manifesto.

Last Day of Winter

Materials: paint, black and white print, paint, 3mm MDF board with Fiber composite material ornament
Printing Technique: Transfer print / Digital Printmaking
Dimensions: 2 boards of 87x145cm

First Wood

Materials: paint, laser print paint, 3mm MDF board
Printing Technique: Transfer print / Digital Printmaking
Dimensions: 74x120cm

Near that Hill

Materials: paint, laser print paint, 3mm MDF board
Printing Technique: Transfer print / Digital Printmaking
Dimensions: 74x120cm

What I made for the ‘Lotto BrandenBurg Fotografie Preis 2022’

Materials: paint, laser prints (color / B&W), MDF
Printing Technique: Transfer print / Digital Printmaking
Dimensions: up to 33x45cm

Application text:

The theme that unites all my works is time. I use my own digital photos to create images that are usually part of larger artworks. What you see here are just the prints, made the way I am now doing more and more: transfer printing on painted surfaces and then disguise them as artifacts weathered by time. For me the printing process I use now with digital images, is as important as creating a print from a negative like I used to do in a darkroom.

The works I create that way are fake, they are forgeries of artworks that have never existed. Or maybe they will, one day, in the future.

To the rest of the text I send with the images…

Talking about the birds

There is this thing about birds, that if they are used to symbolize humans in a composition/painting/collage – we do accept them as humans, there is nothing alien about them, no uncanny valley stuff at all. And at the same time they mostly do not really bring their own character- or so I think.

I have the impression that if I were to use other animals then we have more of an idea of what that animal symbolizes. Insects are NOT human, they are a danger and mammals are surrounded by the stories we heard about them in our childhoods or what they mean for us as food or their economic meaning or as pets. They immediately have character, or symbolize something.

At first I have used humans made from 3D puppets in my artworks, but even though I still like those works, it was also too flat. I have also made works with pictures of real humans and tried to use their stories in my artworks but then it became too personal for a couple of them and therefore I stopped having permission to use these compositions in exhibitions or for sale.

Birds have no baggage, they are not us – some say they are not even real – they are beautiful reptiles with wings. This makes them ideal to use as characters in my future compositions because we can somehow identify or bond with them or ascribe them human qualities, emotions or so – but they are also not us, they are neutral. I could also use reptiles, I think, but I have more pictures with birds in them.

Work in progress: Nature meets City I (2020-2021?)

This is growing into a new series: nature meets city – part cityscape part landscape.  Made a lot of cityscapes over the year and I started to notice two things that interested me the most. If I was working from a tower or so, those are mostly in the middle of the city – or what used to be an important point, like a harbor. And I had the tendency to zoom in on edge of the towns, its borders in the landscapes. Or, when standing outside of a city on a high place, I tended to focus on the borders from the other direction – or focus on patches of nature in the cities.

I know we can hardly call it nature with the anthropocene and all, but still.

Pictures taken in Hamburg and Berlin.