Photomontage

Pure Photomontage or photo-illustrations, the pictures used are always my own, editing/compositing done with the aid of various programs but mostly photoshop. Nothing is forbidden.

New Odalisque (2004)

New Odalisque is my attempt to step into another old tradition. I have huge problem with the way romanticism has taught us to create original artworks. There are certain stories that have to be told again and again. There are only 36 base stories – Goethe and Schiller tried to create a 37th one but they failed. There are certain pictures that have to be recreated again and again, every time from a different perspective. A different perspective in time, a different person trying to recreate it from his personal perspective, standing in the culture he or she was born into. The Odalisque seems to be one of these pictures.

Size: 67x47cm @300dpi
Pixelsize: 7915px*5551px
Origin: Composition made with photos, scans, some 3D.

New History (2004)

New History I is born from an attempt to recreate one of those huge tapestries depicting epical wars with monsters, and huge armies marching by, and the good king performing good deeds. All these tapestries have huge borders filled with ornaments. New History 1 was the first one, the one with the monster. It was supposed to be a series, but after a while I did not like number 2 anymore. Maybe I will continue working on it, maybe not, or maybe I will start a new series.

Size: 67x47cm @300dpi
Pixelsize: 7915px*5551px
Origin: Composition made with photos, scans.

New Saints Triptych (2003)

These three works are my first successful attempts to create digital art: A young woman smiling, destined to be a saint in a bleak world, a woman gave birth to her to-be saint son, destined to become a martyr in this dying world, a dying saint, a young man, a fish watching him from a polluted sea. The description for all three works in this series is the same:

In these series I tried to combine the idea of a religious painting with the way we have come to look at our future: dark, filled with industrial waste, or maybe we are living on other planets, who knows. What will our saints look like? Will there ever be new saints when we leave our solar system? Or is this an Earth-bound phenomenon?

The idea of having saints in the dark future that might lie ahead could be comforting one, we might really need them. Or maybe the idea is an impossible one, I don’t know.

Size: 47x67cm @300dpi
Pixelsize: 5551px*7915px
Origin: Composition made with photos, scans from books and magazines, some 3D.