Jacco Oliver Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1972 -

Merging painting with video, Jacco Olivier creates short, intimate animations that document his painting process. Olivier's works are narrative episodes that depict simple moments from daily life—a bus journey, a swim in the ocean, a film in a theater, or a walk through the woods—set in microcosmic, enigmatic worlds. As he paints, Olivier photographs each step of the process, then uses the still images to create stop-action animation.

Although the process of photographing the action is time-consuming, Olivier paints spontaneously and intuitively, rather than restricting himself to pre-exisiting strategies or planning how each incremental photograph will relate to the others. The captured sequences see his paintings move between abstraction and representation, and hint at the inherent tensions that arise from moving between divergent mediums.