(b. 1970, USA), Lives and works in New York
Pieter Schoolwerth explores and experiments with the effects of generalized abstraction on representations of the human form in painting.
His elaborate production process combines sculpture, photography and painting and moves between digital and handmade modes. Photographs of live models and objects form the compositional base of his work. From these photographs, Schoolwerth creates hand-cut three-dimensional foam-core models, only for these assembled scenes to be photographed again and digitally manipulated and edited.
This image is printed onto canvas and finally, painted over with oil pigments, adding details and texture. The end product is a dazzling, multidimensional scene, at once playful but also profoundly disorienting and illusory. The artist uses the term ‘reverse cubism’ to describe his work: a way of representing multiple objects from a single point in time, and again an analogy for the simultaneity and fast-paced movement of the digital age.