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The Arts Intel Report

Christian Lemmerz: The Last of Us

Mar 11 – June 27, 2021
148 Green St., Brooklyn, NY 11222, United States

“The sculptures are new archetypes for our digital era,” explains the Danish artist Christian Lemmerz. “Intentionally, I excluded my own hands in the sculpting process, allowing the computer to manifest itself in the carving of the works.” Lemmerz, who lives in Copenhagen and Pietrasanta, Italy—famous for its quarries of snowy Carrara marble—is known for his mastery of the marble technique, and uses his sculptures to explore dark subjects: death, mutilation, catastrophe, war. In this exhibition, however, Lemmerz steps into the unknown. With a 3D scanner he catches human figures in movement, then manipulates the results with a computer, and then has a drilling machine sculpt the slabs. The distorted figures are otherworldly, revenent, or perhaps in the process of rebirth. Here is a hybrid humanity, fathered by technology. —E.C.

Christian Lemmerz, “The Last of Us,” 2021. Installation view.