ABSTRACT ART WITH NEW MEDIA exhibition artist | PATRICK STEFANIAK
This work takes the rigid cube and grid and folds them into other possible shapes. It engages with cloth simulation, a tool used in 3D graphics and videogames to render realistic cloth movement, to deform the cube, which Sol Lewit was notably interested in for its seemingly being the simplest 3 dimensional shape.
In the framework of geometry we think about most commonly, these cubes are distorted and stretched into many unusual forms. But, from the perspective of topological geometry they remain cubes. This is because they are not torn, creased, and don’t have holes added. And despite their abstraction, and their affinity towards minimal and conceptual art histories, they constantly turn into bodily figures.
Patrick Stefaniak is an L.A. based artist who recently completed an MFA in Digital Art + New Media at UC Santa Cruz, earned a BFA in Digital Art from Indiana University in 2015, and has worked in New York as a Creative Technologist. He works in crochet, 3D videogames, painting, animation, and performance to think about labor, rendering, craft, perception, and queerness.
