Minimalissimo

Spirit Structures

art & illustration

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England-based artist Ben Long has been making a series of work called Spirit Structures, which are geometric sculptures made out of spirt levels.

His website explains:

The Minimalists employed manufacturing processes as a rejection of expression, as a way to avoid what they viewed as self-referential complacency in their work. Long adopts this approach, not necessarily to mirror this detached austerity, but as a way to relate his own sculptures to the techniques of replication that enable goods like the spirit level to be widely available for domestic consumption.

I find Ben Long's dealings with Minimalism in this work fascinating.

Pictured here are Modular Spirit Structure (Fisco L52 series) and Two Part Modular Spirit Structure (Fisco L25 series) both from 2010, and an isometric projection for a new Spirit Structure, which is currently in the works. The new Spirit Structure is the first of the large scale Spirit Structures. This particular one encompasses the phenomenon known as "strange loops", which you might be familiar with from the graphic works of Escher.

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