Author Archives: theoelsby

“According to trendwatchers, 3D-printing is the next big thing: in the near future, every household will own a printer that is capable of printing digital three-dimensional objects into a physical object. In the process that is best known under the name ‘Additive Manufacturing’, a 3D-printer builds up a model layer by layer by selectively hardening liquid or powder.
If this powder is a plaster-like material, a model can be directly printed in full color. The 3D-printing of delicate and colored models is far from being just pushing a button, but requires great technical skills. Therefore only a few specialize in this technique and there is no artist who pushes the boundaries of colorized 3D-prints as far as Eric van Straaten.”

“There is no technique that is capable of achieving such a great degree of hyper(sur)realism as 3D-modeling. At the same time, 3D printing is the only technique with which virtual models can be made actually physically touchable. Physical expressiveness in form and content is the biggest strength of the work of Eric van Straaten: while the sculptures remain to have a certain digital feel to them, the pieces contain a weirdly eroticized corporeality. Balancing on the edge of kitsch, the marzipan-like quality of the material resonates beautifully with the apparent innocence of the scenery.”

Eric Van Straaten

” Artistically, I am mainly inspired by depictions of the human form, and especially women, without to much ‘distortion’ or ‘distraction’ in the technique. Therefore my tastes are a bit ‘old fashioned’ or maybe even kitsch. I don’t like to expressive, abstract or conceptual work. As sculptors I really like Bernini and Furienmeister (a kind of Bernini but then in tiny ivory statues). The artist most important for my own development has been Hans Bellmer, a doll maker and painter in the surrealist movement. I like to be ‘drawn in’ by the scenery, and this happens the most powerful in portraits, I think (I also consider my own works to be more portraits than sculptures). Art that works for me, is always multilayered. I like it when at first glance, there appears to be just one (mostly beautiful) ‘truth’, but when you look deeper, there is something else going on at the same time. How greater the artwork is, the bigger the difference between the apparent truth and reality of the whole.” –Eric van Straaten