Events

In his process-oriented practice, Toby Ziegler delves into the relation between objects, images and the space in which they exist. Combining traditional sculptural techniques with new technological means, the artist manipulates a broad range of art historical references, from Dutch Old Masters to Nineteenth Century landscape paintings and Spanish still-lifes. At once novel and familiar, his sculptural forms and pictorial spaces are layered, inhabited by compelling contrasts. This aluminium sculpture, Slave, 2017, consists of an anonymous figure maintaining a contrapposto stance, referencing Henri Matisse’s sculpture Madeleine, 1901, and Michelangelo’s Dying Slave, 1516. For this work, Ziegler produced a clay model by hand which was then scanned, digitally enlarged and 3D printed, before a further mould was taken from the print and used as a cast for the work. The sensuous grey curves of the final sculpture bear various imperfections, highlighting a mismatch between the physical and digital worlds: the coiled clay forms are marked, deformed and sometimes ruptured, engendering what the artist refers to as ‘baroque flourishes’.