Catalogue published on the occasion of Laric's solo exhibition Photoplastik at Secession, Vienna. As a great admirer of glyptotheques and plaster-cast collections, the artist transforms Secession’s main hall into a sculpture display. The show assembles his adaptations of works ranging from antiquity to the present, combining them with objects drawn from popular culture and the natural sciences. Designed specifically for Secession, it consists entirely of new pieces, most of them 3D prints, a technology that has been central to the artist’s work in the past few years. The selection of sculptures may seem baffling at first, but when it is read along lines indicated by the key concepts of form, technology, politics, and law, it unfolds as a narrative about art and technology.

With seeming ease, Laric combines and transfers qualities from the digital domain such as convenient reproducibility, endless variability, and rapid dissemination into physical space. His sculptures are based on scans of works of art and other objects — for this exhibition, he worked in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Albertina, the University of Vienna’s Institut für Klassische Archäologie, and various public locations—before subjecting the resulting data to a time-consuming 3D modeling process and preparing them for “printing.”

Oliver Laric
‘Photoplastik’, 2016
German, English
Edited by Gudrum Ratzinger
Published by Secession
Printed by REMAprint Litteradruck, Vienna
Publication photographed by Nick Ash
Softcover
17×24 cm
6¾×9½ in
176 pp. with 155 images and 50 images with Magic Eye technique
ISBN 978-3-95763-335-4