Pair of Dogs

Based on an incomplete 3D scan of a sculpture from the 1stC-2ndC located and provided by The British Museum, Pair of Dogs, 2021 points to the complexities of authorship and the notion of originality while challenging the conventional hierarchies tied to our understanding of art. The sculpture is part of a group of works, highlighting that questions of originality and authorship are not issues, necessarily exclusive of our digital age, but have always been an inseparable part of art. A neoclassical variation of the Pair of Dogs sculpture, discovered by Laric at the Tiroler Landesmuseum in Innsbruck, Austria, is only one of many examples.

Introducing a new technique that combines 3D scanning and 3D sculpting, the work brings together an appropriated amateur scan with a layer of Laric’s subjective postproduction to the actual piece. Depicting inter-animal relationships, a theme scrutinized in many of the artist’s recent works, Laric questions the rigid hierarchies imposed by man upon our understanding of nature as the Other and as subject to domination and power imposition, rather than as a complex web of interdependencies that we are a part of.

Made in SLS nylon and acrylic paint, the perforated sculpture highlights the immaterial nature of its making and its future existence within the virtual world. Pair of Dogs, 2021 was on view as part of Oliver Laric’s solo exhibition Timelapse at The Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K), Ghent.