Bertin van Vliet graduated pop-art paintings of stylized Edison dolls and unrecognizable portraits of famous actors. Soon after graduation at the end of the ninetees, new media made it's entry. Bertin adapted new media and made it a subject for his art.
Bertin experimented with found material from his collection of ex-rental VHS tapes for animations and videos, and made blow-up drawings of small magazine clippings.
" Casiotone"
Acryl on canvas 2012
This Morning (2003) this video is made in 2011 from found images.
The Video Dead (2000) is a drawing made with coloured feltpoint marker pen on paper. It's a blow-up of a gif image (h x w) 140 x 160px with indexed colours that resemble the colours of the markers. Every pixel is drawn as a 0,5 x 0,5 cm square. This is a good example of the influence of new media in graphic art. There is a great contrast between the time consuming handywork and the fast computer rendering. click here for a detailed look.
The portrait of the girl brushing her teeth, looking in the mirror, is a still taken from the horror movie The Video Dead. She actualy does not look at herself in the mirror but straight in the lens of the camera. The viewer sees through her eyes and become the character for a moment.
Fu Manchu is a fictional character (here portrait by Boris Karloff) and an archetype of the evil criminal genius. This is a rather large drawing made with ballpoint pen in 2010
This is pencil drawing Mona Lisa (2011) I made to experience the real life size of the famous work. Besides copying it in original size I have changed the composition a little bit. (it's a few centimeters wider) So now the composition follows a grid that is most logic. For instance her left eye is now exactly in the middle and some diagonal lines follow her shoulders, clothing and hands.
I took my material from the internet and used three different jpegs to see the details. I also used software to enhance the contrast to see more clearly in the dark parts. Also some imagionation was used to draw the odd landscape.
The Voyager Interstellar Record was intended as a radioplay for Extrapool's Audiotoop series. The video I made to present it live as part of a performance with live music. The radioplay is available on 7" with 'polka dot com' on the b-side as part of the Audiotron publication. This youtube version has been watched over 77.000 times (aug. 2011).
