Eric van Straaten. Images courtesy of Krause Gallery and the artistsThe pleasant and the sublime conflate in Krause Gallery upcoming show titled Future Perfect. Debuting the sculptural works of the Australian Paul Kaptein and Dutch Eric van Straaten. The two artists create work that play with our perspective, offering human renderings that are cute, off-kilter, and speak of the future through their creative processes.
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Kaptein carves people out of wood and distorts them through the lens our computational sensibilities: we think tremble and distortion. His shadowy figures spin the traditional artisan hand-to-wood to reverberate our cultural proclivity to the computer screen. Van Straaten’s focus in his 3D modelings is on the pubescent girl before she reaches adulthood. He uses 3D printing to create virtual models that are physically touchable. His girls emote similar feelings as Richard Kern muses in their natural environments.
Gallery owner and curator Benjamin Krause tells The Creators Project, “I paired them [artists] together because I love the idea of the traditional approach to sculpture by hand carving it and the other with this future method of sculpture by using a 3-D printer. Both are very contemporary and both perfect in their craft but from two completely different periods of innovation. What is future perfect?”Indeed Krause's strength is in pulling out the whimsy and wonder out of disparate methodologies for considering the human form. We see the future staring back at us and it’s both carved and printed.
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