Eye Magazine

Marian Bantjes writes: I created large conglomerate pieces using around 200 individually generated images, which I then arranged in a loosely interpreted ‘floral arrangement’ in a vase.

For a while now I have been making what I call ‘sticker paintings’, created analogue, from stickers I buy on eBay. The stickers must be generic and mass-produced and are often vintage. When I discovered Midjourney’s ability to create similar multiples by regenerating the same image over and over,

I realised I’d found my new stickers – although of course I apply them digitally, in Photoshop.

The vase is also a form I have been working with for a while. I always create it as a black or white void. What comes out of (or is sucked into) it varies wildly.

Midjourney still has trouble with multiple bodies, and the wrestlers often have extra or fused limbs. They wear a variety of strange things, including something that looks like diapers, and their positions are not always combative but sometimes more like a dance or an embrace (the same is true of the Golden Warriors). Getting women’s faces that don’t look like advertising models is always a struggle.

These sticker paintings and more can be seen at marianbantjes.com

Marian Bantjes, graphic artist, writer, Bowen Island, Canada

First published in Eye no. 105 vol. 27, 2023

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