The Supplement: Thomas Raschke

Saw these thought of you: everyday objects rendered as life-size wireframes - in wire!

"...if I try to retrace the origins of my wire sculptures, the thread of memory leads directly back to the internal world of the early cardboard sculptures. Generating an amorphous form from a static material necessitates an understanding of the principles of inner structure and external cover--skeleton and skin. Similarly, the zeppelin demonstrates that a skeletal structure by itself can describe the shape and volume of the entire form. This may sound simple and obvious. Nevertheless, in a drawing of a zeppelin, the individual lines, their paths, and the net-like structure they depict present an illusion of plasticity. We often forget the high degree of abstraction occurring on a two-dimensional sheet of paper: the curving horizontal and vertical lines suggesting a three-dimensional form to us, while supplying precise information about the border between the object and the external world. Lines are minimal shorthand for complex plastic forms.

These principles and possibilities can be taken a step further, with the generation of three-dimensional drawings inscribed within one another: a little bit like the principle of the babushka. For instance: ... A drawing in a drawing - only three dimensional. But how can a plastic form be described by simple bent lines in space? The artist employs very different methods from those of the engineer or mathematician. To depict a bowl, he needs only an ellipse and an arc of a circle. The artist thrives on the confluence of abstraction and meaning. Unfortunately, laundry machines are much more complex than simple bowls. Computer design programs are useful in that they apply uniform net structures to objects--so-called “wire frames.” The superior descriptive powers of these lattices become obvious when the designed object is virtually rotated. With a wire sculpture, while the circumstances are reversed--the object remains still while the viewer circles around it-- the optical effect is the same. Of particular importance to me is this question: how many lines are necessary to describe the edges and surfaces of an object in space? There is always a compromise between the sum of lines and plasticity, the ideal balance lying somewhere between an austere economy and the luxury of detail. Consider a ball, for instance. How many circles are necessary to depict it? Two? Three? Or does it need meridians--lines of longitude and latitude--like on a globe? With these we can grasp the ball’s surface, but what if we want to view both the interior and exterior simultaneously?"

from thomasraschke.de

You can see more of Thomas Raschke's wireframe sculptures here.