Ben Heine, 1983 | Illustrator and photographer

Ben Heine is an illustrator, portraitist, caricaturist and photographer.

Ben Heine is a Belgian visual artist, journalist and music composer born in 1983 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, currently living and working in Brussels, Belgium. He is best known for his original series “Pencil Vs Camera“, “Digital Circlism” and “Flesh and Acrylic“.

He has a Master degree in Journalism completed at IHECS school of Journalism in Brussels. He also briefly studied History of Art, Painting and Sculpture at Hastings College of Arts and Technology in the UK.

He is a self-taught person in drawing, photography and music. He also has over 10 years of work experience in communication and marketing. Throughout his academic training, he was also able to learn several music instruments (drums and piano) and several languages (French, English, Dutch Polish, Spanish and Russian).

His artworks were exhibited in countless fairs and galleries in Belgium, Hong Kong, South Korea, the UK, Russia, Romania, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, the US, Turkey, Brazil, and Spain.

His works have been published in some of the most famous newspapers and magazines. Ben is an enthusiastic traveller, he loves discovering new cities and cultures, each one of them being a huge source of inspiration for his creative projects.

Through his career path, Heine became the ambassador of famous brands such as Samsung and Mazda and he has worked for other clients such as Harbour City, Diesel, Turismo de Canarias, Semmel-Concerts, Kare Design, Moscow Planetarium, McCann Erickson, while still making time for personal projects.

He started producing and composing music in 2012. A documentary about his work was released in 2012. Ben is married to Marta and they have two children. Ben’s father was a commercial engineer and his mother a choreographer and a dance teacher.

- "In my painting, I've been deeply influenced by German Expressionism, Belgian Surrealism, American Pop Art and Social Realism.

So far, I've exhibited my creations in galleries and art events in Belgium, Great Britain, Turkey, Romania, France, Canada, USA, Germany, Brazil, South Korea, Spain and Palestine.

I have always had a very generous conception of art, I don’t like the way art is nowadays used for commercial purposes only and proposed to the elite, I think everybody should have the chance to see and enjoy culture.

My artistic work is mainly the result of what influences me and inspires me the most in my close environment".

Digital Circlism: Portraits of Celebrities Made with Circles

In this series started in 2010 and through the use of graphic softwares and a whole lot of creativity, Ben recreates iconic faces from history and pop culture with flat circles of various sizes and colors, in order to give them a dynamic and 3-dimensional appearance.

Heine defines it as a synthesis of Pop Art (art including imagery from popular culture) and Pointillism (painting technique that uses small, distinct dots of pure color).

In this series, Heine updates the pointillism school of art by making the “points” actual recognizable circles with which he creates portraits of pop icons and others.

Heine’s circle technique adds a symbolic significance to the subjects portrayed. “These portraits are as striking as posters struck from the iconic Alberto Korda photo of Che, but suddenly re-conceived to be projected upon the infinite cyberwall of digital space, a sort of modern stained glass artworks. Each portrait requires between 100-180 hours of work to be completed.

In 2015, Heine collaborated with Mazda to create a circle design showing a giant lion’s face on the hood of a Mazda 3 car, the result was exhibited at the Brussels Affordable Art Fair.

Many of Ben’s circle portraits have unfortunately been copied, stolen and plagiarized in various countries around the globe.