3D Print Art Inspired by Henry Moore
from Nick Ervinck | PUBLISHED: 2019
Nick Ervinck created a series of small god statues partly based on Roman artefacts, and in particular helmets, armour, busts, Jupiter Columns and statuettes of gods. The monumental sculpture LUIZADO was also inspired by Henry Moore’s use of negative space to accentuate positive space, and by the cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost. Ervinck’s resulting mash-up or hybrid presents the viewer with familiar classical elements and startling futuristic visuals. LUIZAERC emerged from the overhead view of LUIZADO and resembles a sentry, or a votary, guarding the entrance to a deity’s inner sanctum. The sculpture is simultaneously frightening and fascinating: the viewer may wonder whether the guard is concealing the realm beyond the tangible—or if he is about to open the gates to it. LUIZAERC seems monumental but it is, in fact, constructed from holes and lacunae. Henry Moore was pioneering in his incorporation of voids in his sculptures, especially in his Reclining Figure series. These “enclosed spaces”, and their relationship with the volumes—or positive spaces—blurred the boundaries between inside and outside space in his work.
By Henry Moore
By Nick Ervinck, in collaboration with STRATASYS
With TANATILSUR & TANATIRIUB, Nick Ervinck explores how to merge fluid lines and colours. Using traditional African clothing and masks as source materials, he created highly detailed images with multiple substantive layers and visual principles, including virtual scratches that echo the real-world marks that add poetry and vulnerability to classic sculpture. He incorporated rich African colours as well as luminous Art Nouveau lines, and elements of ancient Mayan and Inca art. The interplay between all these cultural heritages creates a hybrid that is both new and deeply familiar. The creation of movement in this series reveals Ervinck’s fascination with futurism. It is easy to spot a historical debt to the famous Light-Space Modulator by Moholy-Nagy, or the imagery of Georges Vantongerloo that dealt with light and energy. The balanced use of old and new, the constant reference to past cultures and present technologies, are in line with Henry Moore’s philosophy and practice. Moore was a frequent visitor to the British Museum’s world artefacts collection, and expressed surprise each time at the power of other cultures’ visual languages. He analysed and refined every shape and line and opened the way to a purist approach to sculpture.
By Nick Ervinck, in collaboration with STRATASYS
BRETOMER
BRETOMER is a hybrid of diverse art, design and architecture traditions and methods. There are visible influences from classic sculpture, notably in works by Hans Arp, Barbara Hepworth and Georges Vantongerloo. Like Vantongerloo, Nick Ervinck traps an inner world inside a transparent shell. The use of transparency recalls traditional glassblowing, and in turn, with its visual freezing of liquid movement, glassblowing recalls futurism. While traditional sculptors work by removing material, Ervinck adds layers of forms and balances them with expressive empty spaces. BRETOMER has elements of both the familiar and organic, and the alien and futuristic. It appears to be a sea creature, or a laminar flow of water where the dynamic is invisible, or an unstable, shining, virtual object that the viewer can read and complete as he or she desires. The functional use of space in sculpture is a language we recognize in the works of Moore. He pierced and subdivided massive materials in such a way that a compact volume would emerge and become sentient. Moore was one of the first western artists to exploit the full potential of this new approach in both his artistic vision and his technique.