New Media: Lifeless or Lifelike..

Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions, and one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modeling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since modernism, shifts in sculptural process led to an almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modeling, or molded, or cast.

There is no set context or so much as content for this medium, throughout the history again and again this medium has been used to represent different aspects.

This medium has been used to record the current time period or time or an event, carved monumentally to stage that specific event in life, to Represent, to idolize personalities, represent religious values, tribute to hero’s, etc.

But today along with these mentioned above, the sense of possession or value plays an interesting part in this medium, the purpose of sculptures evolved a little to the other side of the obvious.

Antony Gormley a British sculptor well known for his work with the human figure, with the unconventional material, that completely bends the outcome/meaning.

This might be me diving a little to much in the work but there two point explosions in his work, its either the feeling self-contempt keeping one’s self and the secrets buried, a much like cryptic feel. And then there’s the other “explosive” feel where everything is exploding and with those specific materials a keen sense of sharp/blunt tone where one might explode unwillingly, much like when the balloon is filled with water at a point in explodes leaving weaves, but of course that’s my opinion. The play with the material and the postures strike me quite a bit.

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist.

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a clear display case became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s.

The line for some people about this work was the fear, that people hold of a “Shark” and how it terrifies people.

And of course the “Virgin mother” who is supposed to symbolize the Virgin mother Mary,

Which of course was a very controversial sculpture, but the point where the selection of material and the point of view this content has been viewed and executed by changes the entire meaning of it, and not to forget the community’s it has pissed.

But then drawing comparison to Pieta by Michelangelo, a sacred sculpture that represents the highest level of virtue/innocence of the Mother Virgin Mary. This point stands to this day much thought provoking to some, as an idol, a religious idol transformed into a mechanical instrument.