Artist Eric Van Straaten Prepares a New Collection of His Hyper-Real 3D Printed Sculptures

3D designer and artist Eric Van Straaten is readying a new collection of his visually arresting 3D printed artwork. The new collection is set to premiere at PAN Amsterdam in November

The new artwork is described as a series of “selfies” of young girls in strange compositions. The young girls are usually dressed provocatively, many would say inappropriately, and paired with animals, various props and occasionally other children.

Often times the young girls are nude, or near nude and placed in extremely suggestive poses. Personally I find the art extremely distasteful and almost creepy in the way that the young girls are hyper-sexualized. However I must say that it is impossible to ignore the level of skill on display in their creation.

Van Straaten started creating 3D printed artwork several years ago, and by being given the opportunity to work closely with i.materialise he was able to really push the boundaries of current full-color 3D printing technology. Most of his work is 3D printed in a sandstone material, which is created by laying down a very thin layer of gypsum powder and using a binding agent and color inks to print a pattern onto it. Once the entire model is printed, it’s removed from the print bed and the excess powder is cleaned away. The model is then sealed and ready for display. Being able to capture the various gradients of color in the sandstone material is not easy, especially not with the precision that Van Straaten is capable of achieving. Not only does he have to carefully design his models specifically with 3D printing in mind, but he needs to understand the limitations of the technology and plan ways around it.

Recently Van Straaten experimented with the new ProJet 4500, which allows him to use the same full color process but with a plastic material. Plastic allows him to create smaller pieces with a finer level of detail than the sandstone material, and it is significantly stronger. The models printed in plastic also do not require any finishing or sealing, they are ready as soon as they are cleaned. He’s currently looking into producing smaller versions of his artwork to be sold on i.materialise and printed in this plastic material.

However it seems that his latest series will still be printed in sandstone, as they are going to be extremely large in scale. Most of the standing pieces will be around 27 inches tall. He’s also still working out several issues with the full color plastic.

The new “Selfie” show will be shown at the upcoming Pan Amsterdam show being staged by Galerie Majke Hüsstege in November. Art, and art appreciation, for better or worse is subjective, but I would suggest a lot of the artwork is probably NSFW.