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5 Artists to Check Out at the Paris 3D Printshow

What to see and who to watch for.

This weekend, the 3D Printshow is happening in Paris. Like its London progenitor, the Printshow is bringing together artists, designers, architects, businesses, and fashion designers, all working at the cutting edge of 3D-printing technology. Many in the Paris show’s slate of artists already exhibited in London, so if you were unable to catch them in the UK, here is a great opportunity to see some highly imagined 3D-printed art. Below are five artists who are not to be missed this weekend.

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Monika Horčicová

Bez názvu by Monika Horčicová
Monika Horčicová’s works run the stylistic gamut. Some are psychedelic, like the digital embroidery of Pelvis II, others look like some of the illustrations and sculptures of Hans Bellmer. In the 3D-printed piece Bez Názvu, human leg bones fuse in various ways to create a skeletal wheel and axle. In another sculpture, a network of circles mesh into a mathematical grid.

Pánve by Monika Horčicová

Horčicová also has a thing for printing the human pelvis, which she multiples in the piece Pánve, then builds into a jumbled, asymmetrical mass. Maybe it’s a nod to the sexual and reproductive impulses of humans, maybe not—either way it's a visual atrocity of sorts. Elsewhere, Horčicová arranges her skeletal printings into patterns that are geometrically mesmerizing. Whatever she's exhibiting at the Paris 3D print show, it's certainly worth seeing.

Michaella Janse van Vuuren

The Rocking Springbuck by Michaella Janse van Vuuren

If partial to the fantastical, Michaella Janse van Vuuren’s 3D-printed sculptures will be just the ticket. For an artist and designer with a PhD in Electrical Engineering, there is something absurdly Gilliamesque about her creations. The Horse Marionette and The Rocking Springbuck sculptures, for instance, are all surreal whimsy, where biology meets technology in cyborg fashion.

As van Vuren says on her website, she’s inspired by automata and mechanical toys, which definitely comes across in what she’s doing. Not surprisingly then, van Vuren makes her pieces movable like toys. Some of these 3D-printed sculptures also look like miniatures crafted for cinematic special effects photography. Van Vuuren’s Birdman also conjures a bit of Max Ernst’s childlike obsession with birdmen in his surrealist paintings and collage work.

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The Birdman movable sculpture by Michaella Janse van Vuuren

Lionel T Dean 

Faberge by Lionel T Dean

Like van Vuren, some of Lionel T. Dean’s printed sculptures are a place where the biological and technological collide. In one piece, Blatella Luminaire, insects swirl around luminous points of light. Looking at them is a bit like imagining insects buzzing around street lamps or plunging suicidally into bug zappers, minus all the death by electrocution. Dean says on his website that he believes the disgust and squalor associated with insects obscures a hidden beauty. Looking at the 3D-printings, it's hard to disagree, especially when the sculptures are so luminous.

In another piece, Faberge, Dean amasses popular products into colorful kitsch. It’s a bit too Jeff Koons to be truly groundbreaking, but still interesting given that it’s 3D-printed and all.

Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

sekuMoi Mecy by Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

This isn’t the first time we’ve profiled Matthew Plummer-Fernandez's work. A few months back we took a look at Venus of Google, which used Google’s alogrithms to create a modern remix of the classic sculpture, Venus de Milo. In Plummer-Fernandez’s other 3D-printed sculptures, various types of digital glitch move from cyberspace into physical forms.

Venus of Google by Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

Plummer-Fernandez also has a minor obsession with Micky Mouse, which he exorcises in psychedelically-glitched and colorful fashion in sekuMoi Mecy and Smooth Operator. If there is any single artist here to catch at the 3D Printshow in Paris, it is Plummer-Fernandez, because he is really approaching 3D-printed art in the most mind-bending of ways.

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Nick Ervinck

ESAVOBOR by Nick Ervinck

Belgian artist Nick Ervinck has worked in a variety of media, and exhibited in galleries all over Europe and the United States. As with many artists, 3D-printing is a new creative output for him, but Ervinck wields the technology in interesting ways.

SNIBURTAD by Nick Ervinck

Several of Ervinck’s 3D-printed sculptures are globular, like SNIBURTAD, or look as though they are self-assembling robots, as in ESAVOBOR. The latter is based on a Roman vase, but as Ervinck says, it has fashioned to look like a transformer toy. Alongside Plummer-Fernandez, Ervinck’s art is some of the most conceptually amazing.

The 2D Printshow comes to Paris November 15th-16th, and will be be stopping by NYC February 13th-15th. Click here for more info.