Hundemenschen (2018)

Overview

Oliver Laric is a multimedia artist who analyses the productive potential of the copy, the bootleg and the remix, examining their roles in the formation of both historic and contemporary image cultures. Ranging from objects to video and sculpture, Laric’s conceptually layered works deploy complex technological methods of fabrication. Merging the faint spaces between the past and the present, the authentic and the inauthentic, the original and its subsequent reflections and reconfigurations, Laric’s work eliminates categories and blurs boundaries in a manner that questions their very existence.   

Hundemenschen (2018) consists of sculptures cast in striated layers of pigmented resin. Referencing the long history of anthropomorphic sculpture, Laric contributes his own addition to the genre by melding resources from prehistoric to contemporary. The sculptures on view were initially 3D printed to create an initial cast for the final artwork. Hundemenschen are beguiling figures with a second layer of symbolism seen just below their polished surfaces—salamanders, crabs and human ears are suspended inside of them.