PARADOX PILE (2023-25)
![]()
Paradox Pile is a tangible body of work, sculptures, made after thirty-five years of producing ephemeral performances and installations. Ages ago, I started my career as a sculptor when I was in my twenties.
I started working with 3D printing during the pandemic. Early on, these sculptures were at table-top scale. By now they reach towards the ceiling. They are tall and slim and sway precariously.
The earlier sculptures were reminiscent of surreal trophies. I imagined them as esoteric plastic relics, seen from a distant future. The later 2024 & 25 works have evolved, their gestalt is a hybrid from sci-fi towers, pop totems, while also relating to musical scores, a semi-abstract vertical sign language.
The work reflects on technology as core human ambition: towards expansion, towards reaching higher and higher, towards creating grander, more elaborate, more dazzling structures, defying physics. No matter the environmental or societal damage. We are manic builders. We must build!
These sculptures are built without much pragmatic restraint. Over time, with moree engineering, they do keep relieably standing now. They won't withstand a forceful shove or push however. They are delicate balancing acts, on the verge of going out of perfect alignment, ready to fail and disintegrate. They are built in modular fashion, with individual sections held together by circular joints, which help also with rebalancing.
PARADOX PILE, in name, is an expression of each sculpture's ephemerality and hybrid aesthetic. Their imbalance is designed in with great intention, imbuing them with the aura of irregularity and the haphazard. Made from reels of thermo plastic thread, these works are bound to eventually break. They will change over time and likely require maintenance. In that, they are necessarily participatory. Repairs are, in fact, a part of the building process. During their design and construction, parts break, resulting often in additions and improvements. Just like in real life, repairs add complexity, adding detail while also imbuing the concept of age and of having 'lived'.
Paradox Pile is a tangible body of work, sculptures, made after thirty-five years of producing ephemeral performances and installations. Ages ago, I started my career as a sculptor when I was in my twenties.
I started working with 3D printing during the pandemic. Early on, these sculptures were at table-top scale. By now they reach towards the ceiling. They are tall and slim and sway precariously.
The earlier sculptures were reminiscent of surreal trophies. I imagined them as esoteric plastic relics, seen from a distant future. The later 2024 & 25 works have evolved, their gestalt is a hybrid from sci-fi towers, pop totems, while also relating to musical scores, a semi-abstract vertical sign language.
The work reflects on technology as core human ambition: towards expansion, towards reaching higher and higher, towards creating grander, more elaborate, more dazzling structures, defying physics. No matter the environmental or societal damage. We are manic builders. We must build!
These sculptures are built without much pragmatic restraint. Over time, with moree engineering, they do keep relieably standing now. They won't withstand a forceful shove or push however. They are delicate balancing acts, on the verge of going out of perfect alignment, ready to fail and disintegrate. They are built in modular fashion, with individual sections held together by circular joints, which help also with rebalancing.
PARADOX PILE, in name, is an expression of each sculpture's ephemerality and hybrid aesthetic. Their imbalance is designed in with great intention, imbuing them with the aura of irregularity and the haphazard. Made from reels of thermo plastic thread, these works are bound to eventually break. They will change over time and likely require maintenance. In that, they are necessarily participatory. Repairs are, in fact, a part of the building process. During their design and construction, parts break, resulting often in additions and improvements. Just like in real life, repairs add complexity, adding detail while also imbuing the concept of age and of having 'lived'.
2024 - Gen2
2023 - Gen1
