Untitled. Acrylic on canvas.
70 X 90cm. 2022.

*Andrew Opty is an artist name, the participant's given name is Philip Boven.

Residence Plan
Andrew Opty aims to continue to explore a number of the broad process driven themes like iteration, reuse and pentimento. Of particular interest is how these themes relate to the growing capabilities of machine driven creativity in AI tools such as Dalle-2, Imagen and Stable Diffusion. With machines able to produce and win art competitions, it seems image-making may again experience a phase change, not unlike when photography was first invented in the 19th century.

Opty is interested in exploring the processes by which humans make images in compliment or contrast to their increasingly capable AI counterparts.

Artist Profile
1) Despina Group Expo (Rio De Janeiro), December 2018 - March 2019
2) Double BA with honors in Fine Art & Architecture, 2005
3) Ontario College of Art & Design, 2001

Base of Activity: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Media Used: Acrylic Paint, Canvas, Paper, Ink

Andrew Opty has for the past several years been interested in the basic physical elements of painting such as color, material and technique. He crosses these elements with themes like experimentation, trial-and-error, iteration and pentimento*. These themes form a kind of generative process by which works emerge - both by design and happenstance.

One of my works titled "Chart #1", for example, is a small collection of various experiments with acrylic paint, catalogued to form a kit of parts to be used as stimulus for subsequent pieces. Other pieces physically disassemble and reassemble dried palette paint, left over from previous paintings, to form part or all of a new painting. Opty uses this kind of accretion of effort and failure as a stimulus and foundation for "finished" work.

*Note: Pentimento is the presence of originally painted elements that have been altered and painted over.