Still Life with Black Pearls

By Zoltan Gerliczki

Still Life with Black Pearls, by Zoltan Gerliczki
From the series "Still Life"
Archival Pigment Print
Image size: 31.5 in H x 25.5 in W.
Edition of 6 + 2AP
Unframed
2019

All Prices are quoted as "initial price".
Please observe that prices and availability may change due to currency

As an artist, I am fascinated by the opulence and richness of still life of the golden age of Dutch painting in the 17th c. This work, of course, symbolizes mortality and the temporal nature of material goods. In my still life, I build these images with the same symbolic references but with the best quality, you can get. By playing with light and dark, I capture the beauty of every flower and each object down to the smallest detail. In addition to photography, I use high-resolution scans to achieve extreme detail. I use photography as a base, but in the end, I arrive at an image that nobody could actually shoot as a photograph.
I am not a photographer in the traditional sense, but I do take many pictures and I need a lot of layers. In my still life of flowers and objects, I create a balance between object and living material with light and shadow and the best quality. I create the photographic illusion of a painting from the golden age in a new tech way by scanning every object individually and combining these with photographs that I take. The construction takes a lot of time and months of post-production. In my work, everything has to be perfect. It’s like a movie. The light and color have to be right. (It is quite obsessive work.) I love the idea of “the impossible image” – the idea of there being no limits and of using the photograph as the basis for an image that’s in my head.