IS IT REAL?

Is it real? The line between real and unreal is sometimes obvious, occasionally not and often blurred on purpose - I am a 3D artist, I play with reality all the time. Perhaps, everything I make is extremely unreal. While I sculpt objects that exist in real-world, I recreate them digitally in a non-psychical world of my software. They never see the light of day, I can’t touch them or walk around them (if that’s what makes something real).

On the contrary, I might make something that doesn’t physically exist, but it doesn’t make it less real, does it? It lives and the proof of it is on your screen. Perhaps then, everything I do is very real? Hyperreal, even? I can borrow an object from the real world to have it on my computer. I then own it, it’s mine to manipulate - it’s mine to do whatever I want with it.

That line between real and unreal goes also beyond the work itself. What is it? Is it art, is it design, is it too technical, is it too easy, is it too obvious, is it too abstract, it too commercial, is it too obscure, is it too tacky, is it too polished? Or perhaps it can’t be art? While photography has answered that already, the new generation of artists are embracing the digital and inviting the audience to tackle that question.

Nevertheless, the most important, exciting and beautiful thing about 3D is the opportunity to make my imagination come true - not just creating something I envisioned, but quite literally make the thought materialise. Something unreal becomes real - If I can think it, I can make it. If I can’t, I lack skill, but the medium doesn’t hold me back, it doesn’t restrict me in making a reality of my own and welcome you in it.

In this image series, I invite you to join me in playing with clouds. While so inaccessible and far up high, here, they belong to me. I light them how I wish, I colour them how I like, I place them where I want and there’s no guessing what shape they take because it's me who gives them shape. Are those clouds, and concrete they sit on, not real because their birthplace is my software? They are real - otherwise you wouldn’t see them.