Oil on printed advertisement, painted in 2002. Brush strokes combined with printed advertisement for plastic garden furniture. Mid Class Mercedes with mid 80s first plastic bumper. Cromeline aged customer’s where disappointed parking in the fresh green. This work is less a car portrait than a landscape of changing design. The Mercedes appears in the greenery as part of a visual transition: the new plastic bumpers of the 1980s replaced chrome with something more functional, unfamiliar, and less dignified. What once seemed odd or disappointing now reads as a distinct period look. The image holds that shift between elegance, modernity, and hesitation.
The Car Portraits 2001–2010
The Car Portraits (2001–2010) is a long-term body of work created over roughly a decade: paintings made directly onto found printed media (magazines, catalogs, advertisements). Each piece is a one-off physical work; this token is the studio edition release of the motif. Lytke creates his paintings by working directly on photographs or printed matter, generating a distinctive interplay between painting and photography. Characterised by a restrained use of colour and isolated, objective elements, his works evoke openness and transformation. They offer a subtle commentary on the relationship between image and representation in contemporary culture, while challenging the conventions of media imagery by infusing them with a more art-historical significance. The Car Portraits, oil or later acrylic on pulp, comprise over hundred works primarily created between 2001 and 2010.. All digital versions reflect the character and size of the original works – some of which are miniature pieces, painted in formats smaller than a matchbox.