The paintings of Pieter Schoolwerth

Topic: Pick one of Schoolwerth's paintings to focus on. Describe what you see in the selected image. How does the painting reflect the quality of a digital image?

In this review to Pieter Schoolwerth’s work, I have chosen The Opposite of Tweet (Rigged #32), 2022. It is a image work that using photo collages, drawings and 3d-generated images to construct the work. The work use blue as a base color and use fluorescence yellow to give the work a strong impact to the audience. By going deep into the images, I can see different animals and objects, including aliens, pufferfish formed by nike shoe, drone formed by a clock, virus with DNA images, etc., making the work looks strange. It recalls me the Metaphysical art by Giorgio de Chirico, which also love creating mysterious and strange mood in his work.

The Opposite of Tweet (Rigged #32), 2022

Yet, unlike Chirico, I do think that Schoolwerth's paintings lack of a sense of beauty. His work do actively using the advantage of digital image that it is easier than traditional paintings on recreating realistic textures or making things that hard to achieve in the reality, such as the pufferfish on the image. After a little research on the artist, I find that some of his images are recreated through video games like The Sims.I also read the discribition on this work and understand that what he want to do is to preset the view of social media in a new form, thus it is understandable that why his choose such a way of presentation. Yet, it doesn’t fully reflect the quality of digital images. Rendering, polygons, shadings, on 3d objects, or things like editing, layer effects on 2d image processing aren’t being fully used. What I would think is confusing instead of playful. Thus, I would say his work isn’t reflecting and unleashing the quality of a digital image.