"The Golden Gates to the City of Wonders"

Printed on 220grms Canvas and mounted on a Slim frame.

Cavas 240 cm x 540 cm.

DUTCH ART in Dubai in a big way May, 2007  the Madinat Jumeirah Hotel has host an exhibition of the works of a wide range of well-known artists spanning the last 110 years.

The exhibition, which showcases works by 21 artists,
 opened 2 May.

Painters, sculptors in bronze and glass, photographers,makers of etchings and screenprints, will all be featured, together with the most advanced cutting-edge creations of the new century — the intriguing and enormous digital photo landscapes produced by the duo The Living Image.

Assembled by Dutch sculptor and art promoter Josine Croin, the show brings together the works of fourteen living artists and seven whose cultural legacy lives on after their deaths.
All are well-known in their native Netherlands, many have works in some of the premier art museums across the world, and all are valued by discerning collectors.

This city of Dubai is a marvel of modern thinking, were transport by helicopter is an ordinary scene, by those who choose to live here. International architects where invited to make the urban town spacey, decorated with the flair of Islamic Art. The tranquillity of the Golf field and the sport accommodations can compete with the worlds best facilities. Dubai has not forgotten it’s past, were the culture of centuries can be seen, but at the
same time the modern art expressions of artists of the world are embraced, with excitement. Dreams of progress found stern roots in the society. This is a place who confronted the future with an open mind were nothing is neglected and everyone is jumping for the next challenge, and is heading to a bright horizon were the sun set is welcomed for a new day.

My computer art work the City of Wonders celebrates the golden gate’s of opportunity were entrepreneurs, and people with new ideas, and a sturdy rule ofgovernment, makes this place unique.

The technique reproduced here has several cell flows of colour interpretation, which result in an perspective analysis of design and colour. It is printed as a unica on canvas. The perspective of
the scene gives the eye the excitement that one can walk into the landscape. Based on the golden ratio, developed by Renaissance artist, creates an window of illusion, depth and distance. Due to
a photographic technique is giving the viewer is the chance to walk through the golden gates to an electric city, with excitement.

A Living Image painting begins with a photograph, either one taken by the artist or an image found in the mass media. Using a computer, they might crop, stretch, or skew, or tweak the colours of the picture, or leave it  almost untouched, before making an inkjet print that they use as the direct source material for the final painting. To create the canvas ~ City of Wonders for the Art-Acquire exhibition in Dubai, ‘Dutch Art and Culture’, they took a series of photographs, all at high exposure, of tropical landscapes containing lilies and palm trees that they came across on their travels. They then adjusted the sense  of space and levels of brightness, altering the hue and tone to give them an even, almost saturated light. Behind the lush lemon trees and flowering calyx, the Dubai skyline dominates the horizon, a motif that serves both to balance the canvases and highlight the subtle differences between the natural world and the man-made. 

The Living Image sees this space, spread out on a canvas
measuring 5.5 metres by 2.4 metres, as existing between nature and civilisation. The paintings revel in this in-between state, putting into play a set of oppositions that animate the work: abstraction and figuration, surface and depth, artificiality and authenticity.

Their recent work for the Child Protection Society in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, displays art of an almost paradisiacal character with words such as LOVE and CARE on foil-masked windows; and wallpaper with meticulously stitched photos of hopping, skipping children.

The Living Image likes to create atmosphere through colour,
using flowers and landscapes from differing worlds,recognisable to people from cultures other than their own, to discover an imaginary idealised landscape. But despite their illusory nature, the paintings have a forceful presence and few contemporary artists bring such intelligence andenergy to an investigation into how we perceive images.
Trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague, specialising in Monumental Art, Henriette Dingemans
took a postgraduate course in Sceneography. She has travelled extensively, using her camera to document people and places. Place and face are of key importance to her, voyaging and movement being ways to approach the universal aspects of a place and its people. Sjoerd Bras also trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in  The Hague. During this period his work was figurative and realistic. Examples of this are his illustrations of birds for the Art Supplement of Avicultura magazine. He also studied the paint techniques of the Old Masters and, though the figurative aspect of his work still plays an important part, the introduction of digital techniques has given him more freedom and his work a new dimension.
A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.