Gameshow
painting of two men playing Lingo on Dutch television
G. Boersma
acrylic on panel
51,5 x 90 cm | 20.2 x 35.5 in
2014
One quiet evening at home, I was unwinding in front of the television when I stumbled upon Lingo, a classic game show where two teams try to guess a word within 5 turns. This painting captures Team 1, featuring candidates Maarten and Wessel, as they attempt to solve a 5-letter word starting with the letter "P."
I felt inspired to freeze this fleeting moment of television broadcasting and preserve it through the slow, deliberate medium of painting. By transferring a fleeting TV reality into a permanent painted reality, a lighthearted game show transforms into a profound space for quiet observation.
The scene brought to mind the poignant words of social critic Neil Postman, who once warned that "a culture fully dedicated to entertainment becomes a trivial culture," and added that "the problem isn't that we're laughing instead of thinking, but that we don't know what we're laughing about and why we stopped thinking."
Through this lens, I view the painting as a quiet warning against the dangers of excessive entertainment, which risks reducing society to passivity and detachment. It serves as a reminder to cherish our shared moments of joy, while quietly inviting us to look a little deeper at the modern media that shapes our everyday lives.
All the best, Gerard
