Quayola Turns 'Laocoön and His Sons' into Meta-Sculptures

Laocoön #D20-Q1. Photo: Todd White

Visual artist Quayola's work often explores classical art filtered through computer algorithms, generating new audiovisual or sculptural hybrid pieces. His latest work explores the iconic marble statue Laocoön and His Sons, a prime example ofHellenistic art that sits in the Vatican and is considered one of the world's great artworks.

Quayola has taken this incomplete masterpiece and produced his own digital sculptures based on it, processing them through custom-designed softwares. The artist 3D-scanned Laocoön and His Sons to digitize the physical work, then fed the data through his programs and new surreal works were created.

The larger work Laocoön #D20-Q1 was milled using robotic arms from pulverized white marble. Smaller sculptures called Laocoön Fragments—glitchy busts of the Trojan priest who, along with his sons, met his death at the hands of Athena via giant sea serpents for nearly ratting out the Greeks hiding in the Trojan horse—were 3D printed with iron-filled resin to create abstract, polygonal versions.

Design iterations. Image courtesy of the artist

In these versions, the sculpture’s baroque composition is partly replaced and complimented by digitized geometric forms to create what curator Adriano Aymonino calls "meta-sculpture."

Quayola's interpretations are part of a 500-year-long restorative legacy which over the years has attempted to complete the sculpture by adding new limbs. It was discovered and dug up in its incomplete form on a Roman hillside in 1506.

"Quayola’s project takes up the speculative-sculptural task, deploying the full power of virtual and physical prototyping technologies." explains curator Nadim Samman. "The result is a hybrid vision—traversing model and monument, code, the corporeal, and the hyperreal."

Laocoön #D20-Q1. Photo: Todd White

Laocoön #D20-Q1. Photo: Todd White

Laocoön Fragments. Image courtesy of the artist

Laocoön Fragments. Image courtesy of the artist

Laocoön Fragments. Image courtesy of the artist

Laocoön Fragments. Image courtesy of the artist

Laocoön #D20-Q1 is on

display in London from April 25 to June 24, 2016 in the lobby of

One Canada Square

, Canary Wharf.

Laocoön Fragments were

 presented with bitforms gallery during the Art Brussels fair earlier in April.

Related:

Quayola Talks ‘Iconographies,’ His New Show of Algorithmic Engravings and Prints

Quayola Celebrates Evolving, Incomplete Forms in 'Captives' Digital Sculpture

Jamie XX Teams Up With Quayola For A Spectacle Of Audiovisual Awesomeness