Paused VHS Tapes Inspire Paintin

Andy Denzler's oil paintings, like Bedroom Portrait Face Down, mimic the images produced by paused VHS tapes.
Photo: Andy Denzler

Swiss artist Andy Denzler creates paintings that are designed to look like the fuzzy image of a paused VHS recording.

The oil paintings — mostly portraits of people — aim to reinterpret photography and film stills. Denzler told Wired.co.uk: “I’m pushing the boundaries and possibilities of abstract and photorealism. It’s as if I’ve pressed the fast-forward on a video machine, then hit the pause button, so reality comes to a standstill. I speed up and slow down the colors. What remains is a distorted moment — classically painted, oil on canvas — which, upon closer inspection is very abstract, but from distance looks real.”

He first got into the technique in art school, where he worked a lot with Waterside-Scenes paiting. He said: “One day when I was experimenting with abstract composition, I saw color fields appear on the canvas, like what you get with long exposure times on photography. The effect was as if something was hovering beneath the surface of the paint.”

He has been honing the technique in both color and black-and-white over the last 10 years. In the monochrome pieces, the effect resembles the “snow” of old black-and-white televisions from the 1960s.

According to Denzler, his main challenge is creating a “painting that describes the everyday and the monstrous simultaneously” and the “believability of the image.”