From 3D Print’s Sarah Saunders: From the earliest cave drawings to the “Mona Lisa” portrait that hangs in the Louvre, art is an interesting, fluid concept. A piece of artwork that moves you to tears could have virtually no effect on someone standing right next to you and looking at the same piece of art. Art comes in all forms and materials – there are the beautiful baskets and seaforms of renowned American glass sculptor Dale Chihuly, Georgia O’Keefe’s modernist paintings, and giant bronze sculpture “The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin.
Now, we are seeing many works of 3D printed art, and while there is some debate over the idea of 3D printers creating artwork, there’s no question that many pieces of 3D printed artwork are truly a sight to behold. Earlier this month, Ukrainian media artist Stepan Ryabchenko presented his three-meter-tall “Walking Flower,” the largest 3D sculpture in the history of Ukrainian modern art.
Ryabchenko, a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, graduated from the Odessa State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture in 2011, a year after he won the First All-Ukrainian Triennial of abstract art, “ART-ACT.” In addition to creating structural works of art, he is also a painter. He says he was involved in creating architectural objects, and did not originally intend on becoming a painter.
He uses modern computer technology in his work, and was nominated for the Pinchuk Art Centre prize in 2011. He is also a laureate of the international contemporary sculpture competition Kyiv Sculpture Project whose works have also been displayed in London and New York.
The gigantic yellow “Walking Flower” is only a fragment of Ryabchenko’s virtual work, “Doom’s Day,” which is now on display at the Ukraine Art Gallery. It belongs to his Utopian collection, “Virtual Mythology,” where he investigates the edge between the material world and the virtual one. He uses his own characters and myths to create an alternate reality.
