These Seem Like Totally Ordinary Objects...Until You Try To Pick Them Up
When looking at these images, you might not exactly see what makes these objects so special. A bottle of ketchup? A work boot? What”s the big deal?
Well, if you were able to try to pick one up, you”d know immediately. These aren”t your average everyday items — they”re actually the carved stone sculptures of artist Robin Antar. They”ve been carved, polished, and painted to look just like the real thing and they”re pretty convincing.
Antar”s work shows how stone, hard and rigid, can be manipulated to resemble soft, malleable materials like cloth and plastic. She developed a method of carving about 20 years ago that allows her to achieve this level of detail. Even more impressive is that she can complete this work with limited sight, due to retrolental fibroplasia in both eyes. Still, she”s not letting that stop her.
Antar”s motivation comes from a desire to capture the ephemera of the modern age — the candy wrappers, the flip-flops, the condiments that make up such a strangely large part of our culture — and leave it as “historical evidence” for people in the future. “Will a bottle of Heinz ketchup exist in 2100 CE?” she muses.
Creating these realistic sculptures requires studying their real-life counterparts in great detail. Antar then selects the stone she feels fits the item best. Sometimes, the stone is chosen to match the color of the subject. Other times, the sculptures are painted or stained.
For the clothing, real laces and other details are also included.
For some sculptures, Antar uses the color of the stone to reflect the real-life object, like these gin and scotch bottles.
The gin bottle is made from green marble, and the scotch bottle from honeycomb calcite.
This jar of Hellmann”s mayonnaise is one of the pieces Antar is most proud of.
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Made from white travertine, it emulates the luminous quality of the mayo and the glass. (An actual jar of mayonnaise is shown next to the sculpture.)
The process is labor intensive, but Antar doesn”t mind. “When I see friends scrutinize the carved hat on the table, endless hours of chiseling and sanding, staining, and mounting are all worth it,” she says.
Of course, dealing with brand names can get a bit tricky, but Antar even sees the positive in that. “I achieved my goal when the U.S. government [wrote] to tell me I cannot copyright a work of art because it too closely resembles the product that I chose to record in stone,” she recalls. “The day I received that letter was one of the happiest days of my life.” If that”s not an affirmation that your work is perfectly realistic, we don”t know what is.
To avoid legal issues, Antar decided that she might as well team up with brands to replicate their products. This 3,500-pound marble chip bag, for example, is still looking for a patron company.
(via Visual News)
Antar does much more than replicate food and clothing in stone. Other works include abstract sculpture, paintings, and items reflecting her Sephardic Jewish heritage. Her work can be seen on her website, as well as on her blog.
