Richard Dupont’s digitally created “Going Around by Passing Through” greets people outside the Museum of Arts & Design as part of “Out of Hand” exhibition (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Broadway
Through June 1, $12-$18 (pay-what-you-wish Thursday & Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
800-838-3006
www.madmuseum.org
Exhibitions at the Museum of Arts & Design often feature handcrafted objects, often with a folkie appeal. But “Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital” changes that dramatically, gathering more than 120 works from the past nine years that have been created using cutting-edge digital technology. Divided thematically into “Modeling Nature,” “New Geometries,” “Rebooting Revivals,” “Remixing the Figure,” “Pattern as Structure,” and “Processuality,” the pieces range from chairs, tables, and lamps to clothing, jewelry, and abstract and figurative sculptures. Artists have employed such techniques as 3D printing, digital scanning, and manipulated computer animation to create the objects, and nearby videos show how some of the works have been made, while the labels list the exact methods used. Barry X Ball reimagines Giusto Le Court’s seventeenth-century “La Invidia” in the golden honeycomb calcite sculpture “Envy.” Michael Schmidt’s “Fully Articulated 3D-Printed Dress” is made of laser-cut Strathmore. HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts offers a new form of transportation with “Rapid Racer,” which was made in one solid piece using 3D printing. Nick Hornby references art history and uses algorithms in making the white marble resin composite “I Never Wanted to Weigh More Heavily on a Man than a Bird (Coco Chanel).” Marc Newson used mathematical formulas to create the fractal “Doudou Necklace.” The exhibition also features works by Frank Stella, Chuck Close, Anish Kapoor, Ron Arad, Wim Delvoye, Maya Lin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Roxy Paine, Zaha Hadid, and Richard Dupont, who uses himself as a virtual model in an untitled, heavily distorted full-body sculpture on the fifth floor and the large-scale head, “Going Around by Passing Through,” that resides outside the museum. “There’s this deep resistance to the idea that a digitally sourced thing can be an art piece,” Dupont says in a promotional video for the exhibition that explores his process. “Out of Hand” should significantly reduce such resistance in the future. (The show ends June 1, but on June 14, Andrew Payne of LIFT Architects will lead an afternoon workshop showing how to use 3D printing in design and programming.)