The Need of Nostalgy of Digital Age and Ard Gelinck
Michael Jacksons, each from three different time periods with at least ten yers of age gap are posing for the camera. It’s like a modest family photo of a three-person nuclear family framed on the console. In another frame, there’s Amy Winehouse, in her most popular period, and perhaps the most diffident, in addition to her childhood as a ballerina, one hand rested on a bright red chair! Could she have accelerated her tragic death by choosing to pursue a career in a different branch of art?
Forty-five-year-old artist Ard Gelinck, who says he wants people to have a smile on their faces when they see his work, seems to be hidden behind the optimistic view that his Dutch genes give him. Using the Photoshop program, he skillfully brings together the celebrities with their younger selves. Gelincik, whose works can be cathegorized as “digital art”, which is very popular even though its meaning and extent has just started to be discussed, started to share his works first in Twitter and has been doing so on Instagram with 166k people since June 2018.
A journey through time is guaranteed to those who have seen before and after photos that depict icons and their younger selves, hugging eachother and smiling for the camera. .Even though we love the theme of time travel since the science fiction films of the sixties, it is certain that in the digital age we approach it with a different appetite. Just with a click, hundreds of years of archives at our hands. Our personal history which dates back ten years, is on our mobile phone, a usb stick or a file on our computer. All of them are more accessible and can be forgotten more quickly because of this easily accessible situation. We prefer nostalgia instead of forcing our memory with so much information and visuals. Pin-pointting a past that is distenced from its context and the sweet longing we feel when remembering it.
Ard Gelinck is responding to the need of nostalgia of the generation who deplete Throwback Thursdays. Since he does this with iconic names, his images don’t seem boring, they attract attention and we may want to look back at them. We have just survived the madness of the face filter application that shows us our face as if it were years ago and as old as it was years later. Join Ard Gelinck before discovering a new app or hashtag and getting crazy. Just like Gelinck, we say, “It’s pure fun and I love it…”