This painting features a contemplative figure, seen from the back, with his head bowed in introspection. The figure is rendered in a dynamic blend of blue and yellow hues, creating an interplay of light and shadow that gives a sense of depth and texture to the muscular form. The background transitions from bright yellow to green, enhancing the sense of calm and reflection. My use of bold, expressive brushstrokes and the interplay of cool and warm tones convey a powerful emotional resonance, suggesting themes of inner peace, strength, and self-reflection.

Harmony and Contemplation

The FUTURE MEMORY series combines the research and usage on artificial intelligence (AI) with historic photographs of the Cold War. 

Together with Casper Schipper, Daniela developed an AI system that learned her 'style' by being fed with images from Daniela's previous painting series. The AI system thus created an own imagery style and was then again fed with another material, that is the historic iconic photography. Daniela used these AI-images of the Cold War as basis for her new body of work. This new series deals on the one hand with the questions of authenticity of authorship and on the other with the truth of photographic material, that is still in such a way acknowledged by people, while at the same time never been more aware of its unreliability. Through this approach, Daniela Schwabe emphazises the potential and challenges of new technological developments such as AI that have brought the artificial and the human closer together than ever, creating neural networks that can be creative, intuitive and unpredictable.


FUTURE MEMORY

In the GOLDEN series painting on gold functions as a metaphoric performance of value and trust. 
For an exhibition at De Nederlandsche Bank in 2016, together with Marcel Broodthaers and James Lee Byars, Daniela became interested in working with gold as material. 
Daniela considers painting as a depiction of what we think about as true, how we arrive at images and the memory of historical narrative and value.


GOLDEN SERIES

This vibrant piece explores introspection, transformation, and unity with nature. For me, a blue face surrounded by lush foliage, pink flowers, and red spiders symbolizes interconnectedness and inner growth. The red spiders, blending into flowers, evoke both beauty and tension, suggesting the delicate balance between harmony and unease. Unease because spiders do make some people feel uncomfortable and scared, like the pain that comes along with being human. 

Waste

This artwork features two crimson humanoid figures, their upper bodies intimately close. Their scarlet forms stand out vividly against a backdrop of azure and alabaster cherry blossoms. The figures exude an aura of closeness and connection, captured amidst the serene beauty of nature's delicate blooms. The contrast between the bold red figures and the soft, ethereal blossoms creates a visually striking composition, inviting viewers to contemplate themes of companionship, unity, and the ephemeral nature of existence.

Union

This artwork depicts a series of blue, disembodied faces floating in a dark, ethereal space, intertwined with green, vine-like tendrils. Each face displays a unique expression, ranging from contemplative to sorrowful, creating a haunting yet captivating atmosphere. The organic, vein-like structures connecting the faces suggest a network of emotions and memories, intertwined and inextricably linked. My use of contrasting colors and the surreal composition evoke a sense of depth and complexity thus inviting viewers to explore the interconnectedness of human experience and emotion. 

Entangled Echoes

This artwork is a surreal illustration rendered in blue ink, featuring a central figure standing on a classical column. The figure is surrounded by large, floating, human-like faces. The expressions of the faces vary, conveying a range of emotions such as sadness, contemplation, and scrutiny. The overall composition suggests themes of introspection, observation, and judgment, as the central figure appears to be addressing or interacting with the magnified faces as if to defy or acknowledge them. My use of detailed, cross-hatching techniques adds texture and depth to the piece, creating a striking and thought-provoking visual narrative. 

Through the Looking Glass

Everything is in order

Hand painted old wooden box

Acrylic on wood

(2023)

  

Everything is in order

**Seeds to grow**

Hand Tufted Rug, leftovers of wool and merino

82,5x60cm

(2021)

  

Seeds to Grow

**Twinflower Silk Scarf**

Silk Satin fabric, 74x74cm

(2023)

  

Twinflower silk scarf

**Insecta**

Hand Tufted Rug, Mix of Wool and Acrylic yarns

125x106cm

(2022)

  

Insecta Rug

**Twinflower Pillow**

Hand Tufted and Stuff Pillow, Mix of Mohair and Acrylic yarns, 130x50cm

(2023)

  

Twinflower Pillow

In icons, light has various shapes: from geometric to natural and various colors. In my works the colors are sober but I represented this element and its dynamism through shapes and structures that refer to cosmic space, primordial chaos, time, spirit, energy, etc. Just as every human being is considered a small universe, it is the mirror of the macrocosm and the inner tension is an extension of the outer one and vice versa. Without light there would be no shadows, this is the first element that appears in genesis. And yet, the intensity of the light is highlighted especially by the dark tones with which it contrasts. I wanted to capture this very phenomenon through a metaphor: the victory of light over darkness.

Unicorn

During the process of producing the series BOYS, the artist experienced several situations where models had different expectations or ideas about the intention to the project and later prohibited her from publishing their photos. In the necessity of making them available to her audience, earthenware became a tool for the artist to conceptualise the revoked pictures. The photos have been removed, but these ceramic objects act as their substitute, opening up a whole new experience in transposing the intention of her photo series.

Ceramic Sculptures

What does it mean when a female photographs a male when he is nude? This is a question that Ecuadorean
photographer, Daniela Torres, has been exploring since 2015.
Without a doubt, the answer is complex and inextricably entwined within the history of visual representation in which the female naked form has been predominately portrayed from a male perspective often depicted as the desired object or the idealised embodiment of the essence of nature in nature.
Rather than objectifying, Torres attempts to bridge a real, but more importantly, a psychological space, between herself and her male subjects. In so doing, these intimate portraits convey a respectful union of human souls despite the gender difference. The portraits are warm and inclusive, with an almost soft and dreamy aesthetic texture, under the decision to use the analogue process. Photographed in exterior spaces inside the landscape of sea and trees, and interior spaces, where nature is signified in the form of wallpaper, duvet covers and cut flowers. Her sitters are photographed instinctively, with a sensitive eye, in which the men willfully succumb to a cathartic experience, exposing a strength of vulnerability; far removed from more obvious representations of impervious masculinity.
These textured portraits manifest a sense of collaboration in semi-performative situations and combine a determined formality in casual and spontaneous moments.
Photography can be seen to be part of an impulse to make a connection with life. A portrait is not simply a visual description of someone, but also contains a dialogue between the photographer and the sitter. To be successful this conversation needs to imply something hidden, unseen and contains a mystery. Like any relationship, there is always a distance and the attempt to close that distance is the space of this unseen dialogue. Even though Torres occupies a real space in the distance between, what we see is not the whole story, yet instead reveals to the audience, an imaginary secret; and like a moth, to a flame, we are seduced into the stories she tells. 

BOYS

In the RAINBOWSERIES Daniela looked at how major historic events such as the Second World War affect society on the level of imagery; certain images stick with us through time and become icons in the collective memory. As a starting point she fragmentized and combined these historical images with domestic photographs of her (German) family from the same era into painted collages. 

RAINBOWSERIES

DEEP FAMILY (2020) is a series in collaboration with designer Casper Schipper. It deals with personal history, family, identity, memory and artificial intelligence (AI).

Looking at the family as a system we are born in, burdened with the history attached to that particular family, it is a system we cannot escape and that defines our behavior with a logic and rules of its own. The way we perceive our family history relies in part on the tangible proof of photography; family albums with photos of marriages, holidays, birthdays, cities lived in, old friends and newborns. The family photo album forms a set of inflexible data that we return to as proof of what happened in our past. What if you would be able to change the visual archive of your family in the instant of a mouse-click?
Within the project we investigated the visual recollection of my family’s photo archive by using AI.

Casper and I developed a neural network that generates portraits of individuals and, subsequently, group portraits of imaginary family members. To start, we collected imagery from my family archive, inserted it in the network and trained the algorithm to understand the typical features of these portraits. A neural network, unlike a family, has a starting point which is known and fixed, from there on it starts developing, expanding, learning and remembering. When this particular process is done, the AI can generate new imagery based on this archive and therefore changes the unshakeable fundament.

I translated the new family portraits created by the AI into paintings. One of the oldest mediums to portray people, it reflects the passing of time, just as families grow, deform and develop over generations. 
The paintings were shown after my residency in Leipzig at the Massiv Archiv in July 2020.

https://www.instagram.com/danielaschwabe/?hl=nl

DEEP FAMILY 


The Force of Embodiment is a project done in the intersection between arts and physics. As an artist, I have been working in collaboration with the art@CMS initiative from CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) for the last four years. I have developed out of my artistic point of view and background my own scientific hypothesis about matter, which states that there is a fifth force in nature, a force that drives the atoms to become bodies, a force that I prove using ink and paper. This project consists of a series of drawings that are simultaneously the experiments that prove my hypothesis. In them, the chemical elements of the drawing (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Calcium, etc) are reacting and leaving the traces on the paper to prove the existence of the "Force of Embodiment".
About the drawings: Size: Different Formats, ink and water on calcium paper
These drawings were supposed to be part of the exhibition "A Cerca del Origen" in Bogotá, Colombia, during the Suratómica Festival, the first art and science festival in the city, which was cancelled due to Covid19. https://www.suratomica.com/festival

The Force of Embodiment

Emerging artist from the Algarve, I now reside in Lisbon, and I am 27 years old. 
Throughout my work, I intend to explicitly convey insecurities that we all have. Oil painting allowed me to capture individual experiences that can be seen in several people who do not have the courage to expose them. Each of the paintings incorporates the concept of social exclusion, shame, depression, insecurity, pressure, violence, etc. We need diversity in the examples that surround us. And we all need a healthier relationship with our bodies and with our image. The use of unconventional models allows me to convey a hidden beauty between each one. A personal and global journey in search of health and body connection is my biggest goal with this collection of paintings.
"Naked Portaits", my recent project, are the "naked and raw" portraits of each of us. I individualized social and personal problems, believing that each of us can overcome them. Movement, colors, dynamics are one of the characteristics present in most paintings, but life also shows us a darker part. Games of light and dark, transparencies also enrich my work. I am a contemporary artist passionate about life and people, so they are my biggest theme of representation.


Naked Portaits 

Remember that feeling when you’ve got a camera in your hands and you accidentally push the button and take a random picture? Normally you deleted it and didn’t even stop to look at it, because its that random and maybe looks like nothing. Next time just stop and take a closer look at all the textures and forms of this randomness, and you may find you notice something else. Hidden beauty and meaning. Just the fact of a simple accident and its consequences can bring us to a different perception of photography, and allow us to create fruitful outcomes from our mistakes.
This recollection of all the accidents in analog photography invites the viewer to look much further into each picture. Further and further until the point where you really feel the textures, and start to look for concepts or meanings. However, you will never be able to fully understand the photographs themselves, as there was no human thought put into their creation.

CLOSER 

searching new possibilities to use beads with leather and co.

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