Purple Porcupine, a sister company to Purple Platypus, is proud to announce the successful partnership with artist Robin Eley, an Australian artist-in-residence. PRISM, his latest exhibit, is now on display at the 101/EXHIBIT in Los Angeles, CA until November 29, 2014. This is an art exhibition you don’t want to miss.
Photo: PRISM by Robin Eley
The show features an installation comprised of nine new oil on Belgian linen works and five innovative sculptures that were 3D printed on a Stratasys Objet500 Connex 3D Printer.
The realist/geometric abstract hybrid paintings and crystalline 3D printed sculptures of Robin Eley present an understanding of identity constructed as much by visual reality as by technology. Prism’s juxtaposition of traditional oil on canvas portraiture with 3D-printed synthetic avatars looks to challenge the presumed separation between today’s physical and digital self. In a marked transition from his concentrated photorealistic painting, Robin Eley’s work is now compelled not only by its meticulous execution but also its quality of lingering detachment.
Every work in the prism series begins with a digital model of each subject built on the 3D software platform, Maya, that has been simplified into an economic low-poly framework.
Photo: PRISM 3D printed sculptures by Robin Eley
This “wire frame,” as he refers to it, articulates enough visual information to function as a portrait, but lacks any nuance of convincing human identity. Maximizing the synthetic nature of this process, the digital frame is 3D printed in a series of interlocking photopolymer pieces, painstakingly sanded, glued and hand-polished, to make an expressionless transparent bust. The clear prism casts no shadow, and lends little information about the person it represents. in a comment on our increasingly important digital identities, the prism is unrecognizably entrancing yet wholly empty, only refracting, reflecting and distorting the information from its surroundings.
To learn more about Robin Eley, and his inspiration behind this exhibit, watch his documentary below.