Title of the Exhibition:

Between Reality and Illusion

Date of Creation:
2006-2024
Genre:
Figurative, Nude, Landscape, Cityscape, Seascape
Period Movement:
Contemporary Art, Photorealism, Surrealism
Technique:
Painting
Materials:
Original digital artworks, Original paintings on canvas
Dimensions:
Variable


Exhibition Description:
The artist started this series of epic photorealist works upon arriving in the United States in his 20-ies. Nicholaas Chiao softly altered his approach to easel painting, shifting from the direct naturalism of his early Academic studies towards digitally collaged and slightly distorted imagery, altered colors, and more complex compositions. These works reveal the mutual influences of the artist and the new American cultural environment. Painterly Realism was the initial style of painting that occupied Nicholaas Chiao from an early age. These photo-paintings take their tradition so early, as Nicholaas Chiao photorealistically depicted the Soviet jeep NIVA straight from the newspaper at age eight. The photorealist depictions of the museum galleries filled by visitors have an essential place in Chiao's creative output. The artist started this line of work upon visiting the Rudolstadt castle in Germany with his girlfriend. He took numerous photographs of her inside the castle's Art galleries, and one picture of her on the tiled medieval floor was an imminent success, leading him to create a series of similar compositions. At the Affordable Art Fair in In New York in 2006, Behr-Thyssen Ltd. sold four large pieces to American art collectors for $4800 each, a not-too-bad result for an emerging artist. In addition to his photorealist works, this online exhibition contains a few surreal compositions. Artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Diego Velasquez, Gerhard Richter, Andreas Gursky, and Salvador Dali significantly influenced these works of Art. Nicholaas Chiao's contribution to this line of Art is his engagement with geometry in realism and his strive to calculate all parts of the compositions and their positions mathematically.