Dutch Masters portrait subjects clothed in foam packing sheets

Netherlands artist Suzanne Jongmans has created a series of portraits in the style of the Dutch Masters, creating the costumes out of soft packing foam sheets. She needs to team up with the artist who creates 15th century Flemish self-portraits using airplane toilet tissue and seat-covers. Together, they will rule the atemporal world.

Referring to both vulnerability and impermanence, I am investigating the texture and feel of both the present and past. Since 2007 I have been working on the series 'foam sculptures': caps and collars, inspired by 16th and 17th century paintings, made from materials currently used for packaging and insulation. This is also an inferior material which is often discarded after use. By using this material I make a reference to consumerism and the rapid circulation of materials. With these foam sculptures, but also an i-pod, a tattoo and a foot in plaster, we end up in the 21st century.
The portraits are a certain reference to Holbein, Clouet, Vermeer and Holland's Golden Age. It is no coincidence. In fact, in the 16th and 17th century, laid the foundations for photography. Call it the prehistory of photography. It appears that the artists have used photographic images, they could not yet capture. In fact, there was the phenomenon of photography so much earlier. This is an atavism of the Golden Age and the early days of the invention of photography.
I use the elements in the present as in the past, the objects in my work are used as symbols of values. I mutate old costumes into new plastics and old masters in new photographic works. By using time foreign materials, plastics and techno's, I am creating a time crux, a tension of time.

Suzanne Jongmans (via Neatorama)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: art • happy mutants • netherlands • recycling

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

zarray

I love it!
Antinous / Moderator

Dutch? That first one is from Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez.
- reglisse
  
  Just to add to the confusion:
  
  When Las Meninas was painted the Southern Netherlands were Spanish. So it looks like Velázquez and the Dutch Masters could be called “Spanish Masters”…
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    It’s Habsburgs all the way down.
    - Rich Keller
      
      Given the evidence, I’d have to agree with you on that.
    - ocker3
      
      I’m reading the alternate universe series 1632, noble lines Everywhere, this made me laugh so hard!
StreetEight

Nice work, but I have to confess the first thing that came to my mind was “Worth1000: OfficeMax Ren”.