Bas Uterwijk, aka Ganbrood, (1968, Amsterdam) is an artist with a background in special effects, 3D animation, video games, and photography. His work explores visual storytelling that distorts reality, a theme he’s pursued throughout his career.
Since 2019, Ganbrood has been working with artificial intelligence to create lifelike portraits of people who lived before photography or never existed. He began minting NFTs on the Tezos blockchain in 2021, evolving his work to include more abstract, “pseudo-figurative” pieces, where he explores the boundaries between creativity and human visual recognition.
In this insightful interview, Ganbrood dives into his artistic journey, from photography to AI-generated art. He discusses his fascination with figures like Vincent van Gogh, the balance between randomness and control in his creative process, and the challenges of working with AI. Ganbrood also touches on the tension between figurative and abstract art in his work, and how AI is reshaping the meaning of originality in art.
BW: Can you start by telling me a little bit about yourself as an artist and your creative journey?
G: Okay, I have been making some form of applied visual art all my life, but only since 2019, I picked up GANs and AI. I’ve always been into special effects, video editing, post-processing, compositing, 3D animation. I did some art directing for Sony on video games. And I’ve been a photographer for 14 years.
BW: So before you got into GANs and AI, you were a photographer. Was that your line of work?
G: That was my line of work. I was mostly photographing people, so that kind of stopped during the pandemic. Suddenly, I didn’t have any contracts anymore, but I was already spending most of my free time generating images through AI. Suddenly, I had a lot more time to do that. At the same time, I needed a way to make a living, so I started selling my AI works on Hic et Nunc, on Tezos. And, well, I’ve been doing this for four years now.
BW: As a photographer, you spent many years refining your vision and your ability to capture that. I’m curious how you balance the randomness of working with a machine and the control necessary to preserve or realize your artistic vision.
G: Well, I’ve never been a studio photographer. I always relied on things that were happening naturally, and I never directed or staged my subjects. So, I’m very familiar with the process of randomness and serendipity, and photography is not that different from AI in that regard.
BW: It’s interesting to think of the world as your generative algorithm when you’re holding a camera and just looking for something to shoot.
Do things like video, AR, or VR play into your plans for the future?
G: No, there are a few small exceptions, but I personally don’t like working with moving AI. There are a couple of reasons. One is that I really believe in the power of a still image, and I think any artwork should be finished in the mind of the viewer. If you give too much away—if you chew it all out for them—then there’s little left to guess. So, I think video has to be even more perfect than a still image. As I said, I worked as an animator before, so I know a little about animation, movement, tempo, rhythm. I just decided I don’t have the time or energy to invest in moving AI. Also, 99% of what I see in animated AI doesn’t really get to me.
BW: Can you tell me the story behind the work that you will be exhibiting in Paris with MakersPlace?
G: Yes. I don’t start with a clear concept—it’s more about traveling through a latent space, producing images, and following my intuition. I end up in places I couldn’t have imagined, but that feel familiar.
This is a triptych. When I started minting NFTs, the AI resolution was low, so I joined multiple images to increase the pixel count. That became a storytelling tool—viewers piece things together in their minds, and I like that.
A couple of recurring elements in my work are blending classical art styles and focusing on background details, like patterns in dresses and wallpaper. The models often prioritize the foreground, but I’m interested in what’s happening behind that. I aim for something between figurative and abstract because it sparks the most reactions from viewers—and from myself. That’s a signature in my work. While I still create figurative pieces, the middle one here invites more guessing, which I find more engaging.
BW: I noticed a kind of impressionism in your work—creating an impression of human figures that, upon closer inspection, aren’t really human. Kepler’s Cabal is a great example. There are many literary references in your work, like Shakespeare and Kepler. Is the linguistic side of prompting part of your practice?
G: It’s not. Most of my work, like this image, is created through visual input. I started in 2019, before prompting even existed, so I worked a lot with input images and still do, often using my own photography.
I never used to title my work because I felt it could limit interpretation, but in the NFT space, titles became important. I started to enjoy giving images titles, though they aren’t always as serious as they seem.
Kepler’s Cabal is from a series based on Somnium, an early science fiction novel. While this title isn’t AI-generated, I’ve been experimenting with AI-generated titles, like fake Van Gogh quotes for my Van Gogh portrait series. I love how AI mimics things we think are real, both in images and language. A made-up image with a made-up title feels right.
BW: Let’s put a pin in the Van Gogh pictures for now and move on to Chlorophyll Fluorescence. Many artists worry that AI will enable others to rip off their style. Your work is very original, but there are touchstones, like Moebius, Art Nouveau, and Ukiyo-e. How do you think about personal style with AI, given these influences?
G: Well, you mentioned Moebius—he was brilliant, and he was influenced by artists like Hiroshi Yoshida and early Japanese artists. If you look deeply, you can see those influences in his work. I think that’s true for any artist.
Of course, I’m influenced by Moebius (Jean Giraud). What he did was amazing. While there’s an ethical debate in AI, I don’t see it as different from other art forms in terms of influence or homage—nothing new is happening that hasn’t before.
BW: I tend to agree. I think a large chunk of the concern that’s justifiable is not artists ripping off other artists—that’s as old as art itself—but rather corporations using a style without fair compensation. It’s like a brand hiring someone who sounds just like Bruce Springsteen or Tom Waits to do a song for a commercial.
G: Or OpenAI ripping Scarlett Johansson’s voice after she said no, and then being totally dishonest about it, because everybody could hear they tried to mimic her. That’s horrible
BW: This body of work feels more like world-building, with photorealistic characters—kind of what Moebius might do if he had a camera. It seems more story-focused, while your other work feels like a pure aesthetic experience. How do you balance storytelling with that more abstract, aesthetic approach like in Chlorophyll Fluorescence?
G: I’m not sure Chlorophyll Fluorescence is purely aesthetic—I try to create an atmosphere that might provoke stories. But the other works definitely feel more like something out of a fantasy or sci-fi movie.
I’m torn between these two directions. I grew up admiring comics, concept design for video games, and sci-fi movies like Blade Runner and Star Wars. I was also in special effects and 3D animation for a while, so it’s hard not to go in that direction.
I created 1,000 very figurative images, but decided not to sell them. That’s not what I want to be known for, but I still love doing it. The more abstract work feels more connected to me as an artist.
BW: Do you see a life for those 1,000 pieces beyond being shared on Instagram, like the way Moebius collaborated with Jodorowsky on Incal?
G: I’m a huge fan of Incal and would love to collaborate that way. But I’m very particular about my work. I’ve tried collaborations, but it’s so personal that it rarely works. I wouldn’t say never, but no plans for now.
BW: I imagine collaborating might clash with your desire to keep things open-ended. Let’s move on. These pieces feel much more like the pure aesthetic experience you’re known for. They have an impressionistic feel, like a picture of something that’s not really there. Where do these fit in?
G: I agree. These pieces are about randomness in play. AI makes it easier for me to create because it’s not all on me. I’ve always wanted to be an artist, but drawing was frustrating—I could only see the parts I didn’t like.
That changed with photography. It combined skill with serendipity—right angle, right light, those little moments that make a photo special. I need that randomness. AI is perfect for that.
BW: Let’s talk about your Van Gogh series. Where did it start, and what keeps you coming back to it?
G: When I started with AI, one of the tools I used was a model that did human faces. I began by reconstructing a damaged photo of Billy the Kid, which made me think, why not create portraits of people who lived before photography, or who were rarely photographed, like Van Gogh—or even people who didn’t exist, like the Statue of Liberty?
As a photographer, I know a good portrait combines technical skill and aesthetics, but the real goal is to breathe life into the subject. Van Gogh was only photographed once at 19, and he was camera-shy, so he escaped most photos. But he was obsessed with his own face, painting himself over and over, probably more based on how he felt than how he looked.
His face is an enigma. We think we know how he looked through his self-portraits, but do we really? That mystery drew me in. In the end, though, portraits often say more about the artist than the subject. With AI, curation is key. I generate hundreds, sometimes thousands, of outcomes, and it’s all about choosing the right one.
BW: Could you walk me through your daily workflow and how you approach projects?
G: Yeah, it’s because I work so intuitively, it just doesn’t work if I have a specific idea and try to work on it methodically. I’ve tried many times because that’s a nice way to make something if you have a deadline or an ambition in a certain direction, but I always fail.
So, the thing is, I wake up, have breakfast with my wife and son. My kid goes to school early, so that gets me out of bed at a reasonable time, and I just start playing. Sometimes it takes me half a day or a whole day to get into that zone where things start happening. It can be painful as well—sometimes I do this for seven days straight, and nothing comes out, and that’s horrible.
I spend a lot of time reminding myself that it doesn’t matter, and that it will come. But when it works, when you hit something, when you kind of hit a vein of gold, it’s great—but it’s rare. The weird thing is, I suddenly have this tool, and for things to be special, they need to be rare. That’s just how it works. It’s like if you really like cake—if you have two cakes a day, it’s not special anymore. You just want it on that special birthday. It’s the same thing with art.
It doesn’t matter how easy it is to make, or how low the effort is—the actual action can be easy, but that makes it frustrating sometimes when I find something I think, “Oh, this could go somewhere, this is interesting,” and then I start pursuing it, and I get nowhere. It’s this coincidence I’m looking for.
I use the analogy of walking through a flea market—you can’t force things to happen. You have to relax, take your time, look around, and suddenly you see something you like, and it’s affordable, and you can take it home. That’s how my days go.
BW: What kind of work would you have made if you were born 100 years earlier?
G: I think art made now usually has some kind of component that couldn’t have been made 100 years ago. I want to see that novelty in others’ work and in my own. I think art should be about me and the world and how we relate, and that’s influenced by what’s happening today.
So, 100 years ago—well, there are a couple of clues in my work. I really like Art Nouveau and the way the Japanese drew. It’s very close to comics that started in the ’40s and ’50s, like people such as Hergé with Tintin. These are influences. I guess I would’ve done some equivalent of AI 100 years ago, but I wouldn’t do something people had been doing for hundreds of years.
Photography would have been interesting 100 years ago. It wasn’t very new anymore, but there was still so much to discover.
BW: Do you have any wildly ambitious, unrealized projects?
G: No, I have stuff in my head, but as I said before, it’s not crystallized yet. As soon as I can put something on paper, I’ll try to do it. But for now, I just follow where it takes me. I was never a person with—I wouldn’t say strong ambitions—but I was never a person with clear ambitions. That makes it hard sometimes to get out of bed—not literally—but, you know, why am I doing this? Who am I doing it for? I don’t have a clear goal, but at the same time, I think there’s something deep inside me that wants to express itself.
BW: There’s amazing creative strength in that, and it’s evident in the way you work through intuition. That always begets different results than someone who comes in with a set project and a clear vision. I don’t think it’s hindering you in any way.
G: No, it feels like it is, but I’ve learned to see that it isn’t. It’s weird, but in hindsight, I think I always wanted to be an artist who expresses himself. I’m almost 56 now, and I think I’ve been doing this well. It started a little with photography, but it really took off when I started working with AI. I think I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for—a good way to express myself as an artist.
