Michiel van der Zanden

In my work, I import the world of digital media into painting and vice versa. I’m using images from videogames and ‘3D computer graphics’. For years I’ve been fascinated by games and their specific visual quality.

As a starting point, I used to extract images from existing games, more like a tourist or reporter. These images were combined in collages, which functioned as sketches for my paintings. Nowadays I mostly use Blender 3D software to model my own (game-) settings.
Ideas, stories and concepts coming from gaming and 3D culture, combined with situations and environments from my personal life, are converted to the intimacy of painting. And because I like to work in a collage-like way, the videogame is an ideal starting point: a game is a 3D (photo-) collage in its essence. I adjust my way of painting to the chosen subject. Sometimes very precise, to overemphasize the kitsch quality. Sometimes almost expressionistic, to enlarge the contrast between the different image elements.

The typical game aspects are unmistakably visible. On top of that, I’ll try to break the videogame’s original intention: I will pause at a diner which is just used as scenery in a racing game… A machinegun from a game is exhibited in a military museum... But I also have a run with traditional painting genres, such as portraits and landscapes. I will take elements out of a videogame and give them a new function and context. Murals from a videogame, become a 17th century ‘Trompe l'oeil’ (an optical illusion), or a soldier’s face, who’s face in the context of the videogame seems less important, is now portrayed attentively.
Sometimes the friction or absurdity is less recognizable, leaning towards a more subtle approach and it becomes more about the overall atmosphere of the work itself.

In short, as an artist I’m interested in the differences, as well as the similarities between traditional art, painting and ‘new’ media.