Bruno Neves

Bruno Neves is currently based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He studied Fine Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2019-2021), where he obtained a Master's degree in Fine Arts.

My artworks easily confine me to the title of painter, yet I feel uneasy about such a title, and think of myself as an imagemaker who primarily paints. What started from a desire to picture things in a realistic and figurative manner, gradually shifted to a more playful and experimental approach, where narratives concerning the tradition of not only Painting but image-making itself play a much more relevant role than do the technicalities of handling paint.

Though my work finds shape through installation, photographic collage and sound, my main medium is indeed painting. What keeps drawing me to painting - specifically oil painting -, is that this technique is still a bit of a mystery to me. Although somewhat comfortable and familiar with the medium, its complexity is still confusing enough to make me feel unsure in what I am doing. I find this feeling of uncertainty very important, as it engages me and makes me constantly question my practice, furthering new questions and giving rise to new problems to solve.

Over the past few years, my focus has gravitated towards reflecting on the ontology of images, particularly within Painting history. I'm curious to understand how the underlying assumptions, associations, and conventions of an image influence our perception of it, and how these elements mirror the context in which the image originated. This curiosity has conducted my research into various visual traditions, encompassing established cases in art history as well as emerging ones like the aesthetics of social media and AI-generated imagery. By juxtaposing these diverse visual traditions, my aim is to deconstruct the conventional notion of the visual experience, questioning and reshaping that which makes a visual tradition.