It’s just a short walk from St. Mark’s Campanile to the Florence Cathedral, located in a futuristic place surrounded by barren mountains and an immense football stadium. This spectacular setting of a utopian Italian Renaissance in the middle of the desert tells us much about the visually rich and impulsive inner world and creative abilities of illustrator and 3D artist Andrei Pintea.
After completing his study of architecture, the Bucharest-born and Hague-based artist specialized in the visualisation and staging of modern architecture and fantastic visual worlds. The latter in particular are informed by his childhood, and so it is no wonder that the images repeatedly mix present and future, past and present, and package them into evocative narratives and myths. Anything seems possible when an enchanted temple, reclaimed from the jungle and bearing a clear resembles to ancient Mayan culture, emerges from the emptiness of the display.
In his work, Pintea always combines 3D rendering, digital brushwork and photographic materials in such a manner that the unity of the image is preserved. The material transitions remain fluid, imaginative enjoyment spreads across the entire image like a fantastical aromatic cloud. Isolated figures inhabit the verdant, sometimes also arid settings, and engage in a discourse on the relationship between man and nature, civilisation and future. In Pintea’s works, time stands still and is again set in motion by the viewer’s mental associations.
Stephan Reisner
