Oliver Laric
Oliver Laric’s (b. 1981, Innsbruck, Austria) work seeks to parse the productive potential of the copy, the bootleg, and the remix, and examine their role in the formation of both historic and contemporary image cultures. This process is intimately tied to his intuitive, idiosyncratic brand of scholarship, which he presents through an ongoing series of fugue-like expository videos (Versions, 2009—present), and further elaborates through his appropriated object works, videos, and sculptures, all of which are densely conceptually layered and often make use of recondite, technologically sophisticated methods of fabrication. Straddling the liminal spaces between the past and the present, the authentic and the inauthentic, the original and its subsequent reflections and reconfigurations, Laric’s work collapses categories and blurs boundaries in a manner that calls into question their very existence. Based on 3D scans made from existing artworks found in museum collections around Europe, Laric’s thin-shelled, 3D-printed multi-part sculptures are assembled using various combinations of contemporary materials. 3D models of the sculptures are available for free download on threedscans.com.
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Timelapse’ at S.M.A.K., Ghent in 2020; ‘Walking Sideways’ at Forum Arte Braga, Portugal and ‘Currents 116’ and ‘New Media Series – Oliver Laric’ at St. Louis Art Museum in 2019. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Post Capital’ at Mudam, Luxembourg; Beaufort Triennial 21, Middelkerke, Belgium, and ‘Europa: Antike Zukunft’, Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Graz (all 2021). Laric’s work is included in the permanent collections of esteemed museums and collections worldwide, including MuMOK, Vienna; Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Cleveland Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Foundation Galleries Lafayette, Paris, among others.
Laric’s forthcoming projects include solo exhibitions at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck; and OCAT, Shanghai.
Oliver Laric, Fish Relief, 2020, Aluminium powder, marble powder, pigments, resin, aluminium stand, 155×90×35 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin
