Rob and Nick Carter are a married couple from London, who engaged more than their love in holy matrimony. What they have, is a marriage of many contemporary art unities. They work in the field of photography, light installations, painting and moving pictures. Rob and Nick are mostly famous for reconstructing old paintings in new technology, by adding them another dimension. Old oil paintings are becoming a unique 3D visual experience for the audience. For technical support in Transforming, from 2013, they turned to MPC – a British visual effects company and made 17th century Old Masters paintings into living and moving burst of art. They use the best technology there is to bring out the best in what made a long time ago. The praise and admiration they receive definitely make it up for all the long hours or rendering images.
Flowers blossom, hands move, the pictures live. They perform this transformation so well, it is hard to believe there is a high definition screen inside of the old looking frame. How we view art in the 21st century is so far away from how it was made before. We look at it online, on our screens, and only occasionally in museums. That idea had been leading this dynamic duo into a creative journey of generating new art under a wonderful contradiction – mixing the old and the new. Their first picture was Vase with Flowers in a Window, done by Ambrosius Bosschaert. After the transformation the day becomes night, flowers bloom and insects fly. What they wanted is to make the audience feel the life bursting out of the paintings, they wanted them to stay in front of them for more than just a minute, to make them experience what the master painter originally experienced while making the painting.
Rob’s specialty is fine art photography while Nick practices painting. They met in school and they’ve been working together for 15 years. The Carters work with new technologies and they mix it with sculpture, painting, photography and installations. Continuously evolving, they embrace the best of what there is and express themselves in contemporary style while creating the stunning sensory experience. For their 2015 work, Chinese Whispers, they selected 20 Andy Warhol works to be remade by Chinese artists. The copies were replicated over and over, and while staying almost the same, there were glimpses of every artist’s work. Nothing can be copied to perfection without leaving, at least, the most subtle, the smallest change in comparison to the original. Going to great depths to contemplate an idea and great lengths to realize it, Carters did this series to explore the notion of the truth.
Questioning age-old questions such as the nature of truth, or the consistency of originality, Rob and Nick Carter always go the extra mile to make an innovative, original, fresh art that is suited both for the 21st-century tech generations and educated art critiques. No challenge is unconquerable for this imaginative couple. Whether that is making Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus dream peacefully surrounded by beautiful landscapes or discussing the concept of truth, Rob and Nick never fail to amaze the art world. They examine the status of an artist in Britain, they make pixelated paintings raising the question of how we perceive art, they even make pigment painting photographs in the sky to show us in how beautiful technicolor world we live. Deep, meaningful, explorative, the Carters give a beautiful contribution to contemporary art.
The artists are represented by The Cat Street Gallery.
Rob and Nick Carter live and work in London.