MILAN––Swedish-Chilean designer Anton Alvarez‘s extruded clay sculptures have been called scatological, but, allow me to make a case for his latest 12 sculptures, which were recently on display in a familiar color during last month’s Milan Design Week (April 17 – 22, 2018).
Immediately, they bring to mind Yves Klein‘s monochrome works, not only in the obvious choice of color (IKB, International Klein Blue), but in execution. Titled Unsighted, Alvarez’ pet name for the project is Yves Kiln, which references both the ceramic firing process and the rich shade of ultramarine Klein created.
Made by squeezing clay through Alvarez’ custom-built and aptly named “The Extruder,” the artist tells Dezeen he wanted his works to appear as though they emerged straight from a source of blue clay––like from a tube of IKB paint.
“I wanted it to appear like these objects had come straight out of the extruding machine, with not much process being put into it afterwards, when in reality they have been painted with this material over the top.”
Furthermore, within the vertically beige-lined exhibition space, each piece appears as a column or pillar to which Alvarez modified with additional elements––twisting, squishing and tilting. Each recursion, while uniform in color, is contradicted by their unique form and the gestalt of their spacial relationship with others yielding an intriguing paradox between Alvarez’ artistic process and the “void” from where he drew his inspiration.
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