SCHILTE & PORTIELJE
(NL, 1953 & 1958)
Huub Schilte and Jacqueline Portielje are a Rotterdam-based artist duo who have been exploring the creative potential of the computer as an artistic medium since 1997. For them, the computer is at once a photographic darkroom and a painter’s brush—a space where drawing, photography, and digital manipulation merge seamlessly. Over the past decades, their work has been shown in leading galleries, museums, and art fairs around the world, and has become part of prestigious international private and corporate collections.
Schilte & Portielje work intuitively, without a fixed plan or predetermined subject. From an archive of self-created image fragments, photographs, textures, and drawn elements, they construct a universe that is entirely their own. Their black-and-white compositions reveal figures that are at once intimate and enigmatic, often suspended between grace and discomfort. Subtle eroticism, sculptural poses, and the quiet poetry of desire are recurring motifs, lending their work a haunting intensity.
Abstraction and figuration intertwine in their practice, resulting in images that blur the boundary between fantasy and reality. The figures they create seem familiar yet otherworldly, fragile and powerful, vulnerable and commanding. The stark contrasts of black and white amplify this tension, imbuing their images with both drama and restraint.
The surreal quality of their work raises questions that remain deliberately unanswered: Could these figures exist in real life? Are they experiencing pleasure, pain, or something in between? It is precisely this ambiguity that makes the world of Schilte & Portielje so compelling, a dreamlike space where the viewer is invited to linger, to lose themselves, and to embrace the uncertainty of what they see.
