{"id":4524,"date":"2026-04-23T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/?p=4524"},"modified":"2026-04-22T17:08:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T17:08:58","slug":"ornamental-sculpture-for-screens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/issue-13\/ornamental-sculpture-for-screens\/","title":{"rendered":"Ornamental Sculpture for Screens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Production Props, Digital Circulation, and the Criteria of Art<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Recently, I produced a series of sculptural masses that appear to float in a void. These objects were not made to function as sculpture in any traditional sense. From the outset, they were conceived as production props for the camera and the screen: objects that exist temporarily in order to complete a photograph. In this work, the final destination of sculpture is not the gallery floor, but the image file. As such, they exist only to appear, as surfaces that remain as images while their reason for being fades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mode of production is inseparable from contemporary digital conditions. Today, many sculptural works are more frequently encountered through screens rather than through physical proximity. Sculpture circulates more extensively on social media feeds, websites, portfolio PDFs, and online archives than in exhibition spaces. Under these conditions, sculpture is no longer defined primarily by weight, gravity, or volume. Instead, it is increasingly shaped as a scroll-optimized surface; a form that remains legible within the flattened logic of the screen. Surface becomes function. Appearance becomes use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within this environment, sculpture begins to resemble a kind of renderable material. In my recent work, I found myself prioritizing how an object would appear in a photograph over how it would exist in space. The void setting, the illusion of floating, the sharply defined shadows, and the excessively refined surfaces are all conditions designed to enhance legibility within digital image economies. These sculptures are physical objects, but they are also ornamental surfaces engineered for the circulation of their own image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What becomes increasingly difficult to justify within this economy is not surface, but labor. If these objects are ultimately destined to circulate as images, why insist on making them so thoroughly, so carefully, and so inefficiently by hand? Why laser cut, stitch, sand, assemble, and finish with such precision, when a convincing simulation could be produced faster, cheaper, and with far less physical effort?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This question is not merely technical. It is emotional and ethical. The excessive manual labor embedded in these objects is, in a sense, unnecessary. It does not improve the resolution of the final image, nor does it significantly increase legibility on a screen. From the standpoint of digital optimization, this labor is irrational. And yet, it is precisely this irrationality that becomes meaningful. In this context, ornament is not simply a decorative surface, but excess labor made visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paradoxically, however, these objects are not reducible to digital renders. They are painstakingly handmade. The density of handcraft marks them as irreducibly material: not renders or props, but images anchored in matter, where their construction becomes legible as excess\u2014through irregular surfaces, unnecessary intricacy, and gestures that exceed what the image requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under such conditions, sculpture increasingly functions not as a permanent material entity, but as a scene that is staged, recorded, and circulated. The boundary between art and non-art is no longer determined primarily by material form, but by the image systems and institutional frames within which an object is inserted. Ornament operates here as a system of visibility: a way for objects to be read, valued, and made legible within image economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At this point, the central question shifts. It is no longer simply, \u201cIs this sculpture?\u201d but rather, \u201cWhere do sculpture or art objects now become complete?\u201d In the exhibition space? In the studio? Or at the moment of upload? In earlier projects, I arranged sculptural garnishes within a domestic-scale architectural structure and completed the work through photography. In those instances, the sculpture did not reach completion in space, but only through its transformation into a photographic file. The work became whole not as an object, but as an ornamental scene staged for capture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sculptures deliberately occupy this unstable position. They are, admittedly, designed to be visually appealing, highly image-friendly, and easily consumable. Yet they resist being fully replaced by digital substitutes. The density of handcraft marks these objects as irreducibly material: not renders or props, but images anchored in matter, where their handmade construction becomes legible as excess\u2014through irregular surfaces, unnecessary intricacy, and gestures that exceed what the image requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ornament is no longer something added to sculpture; it becomes sculpture\u2019s primary mode of operation, structuring how the work is made, seen, and circulated. It is not applied at the end as decoration, but shapes the work from the beginning. What looks like embellishment is actually what determines the form itself\u2014its scale, texture, and overall composition. In this sense, ornament does not sit on the surface of the object; it is what brings the object into being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps these objects are not so different from Christmas ornaments. And yet, they are not the same either. The difference lies less in the objects themselves than in the digital and institutional frames that call them into being. They appear ornamental, but they do not remain merely decorative. Instead, they use ornament to expose the extent to which contemporary art has become structurally image-centered: their value is realized primarily through circulation as images, their forms optimized for the camera, and their physical presence subordinated to the conditions of visibility on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sculpture made for the image is not simply a stylistic preference. It is a symptom of a broader shift in the conditions of visibility, where artworks are increasingly encountered, circulated, and evaluated through images rather than through physical presence. When sculpture becomes a prop for its own documentation, and when material is reorganized as a renderable surface, art no longer resides solely in the object. Instead, the object is shaped in anticipation of its capture: its forms, textures, and compositions are calibrated for the camera, organized less by spatial necessity than by how they will appear as images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question that remains is unresolved: When sculpture becomes an image-production device, where does art now take place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Historically, ornament has often been associated with time, care, and surplus: the hours spent carving, stitching, polishing, and detailing beyond what function requires. In my work, this logic persists, but under inverted conditions. The excess is not demanded by use, durability, or physical encounter. It is demanded by a desire to make and a refusal to allow the object to become fully weightless, fully virtual, fully reducible to its image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Handmaking becomes a form of resistance to seamless digitization. It introduces friction into a system that increasingly prefers frictionless surfaces. The stitched seam, the imperfect edge, the time-consuming assembly process are not primarily visible in the final photograph, yet they remain embedded in the object as traces of embodied work. This hidden labor operates as a kind of counter-ornament: an internal excess that does not announce itself visually, but remains embedded in the object as the trace of embodied work, even when it cannot be fully seen in the image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This produces an emotional tension. To make an object meticulously, knowing that it will most likely be encountered as a compressed JPEG or a scrolling image, is to participate in a form of contradiction. It is to care too much for something that will be consumed too quickly and instantly. The labor becomes disproportionate to the duration of attention the object will receive. In this sense, ornament becomes a deliberate devotion\u2014an insistence on time and touch, sustained even when the work is conceived primarily for its circulation as an image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also an ethical dimension to this excess. Digital optimization encourages efficiency, speed, and scalability. Hand labor, by contrast, is slow, non-scalable, and resistant to replication. To insist on manual making under conditions that reward frictionless production is to introduce a different value system\u2014one that privileges duration, care, and embodied presence, even when these values are not legible within the final image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not nostalgia for craft as authenticity. Nor is it a rejection of digital tools. Rather, it is an attempt to hold both conditions in tension. The objects are designed for screens, yet burdened with material processes that exceed what screens demand. Ornament here becomes the site where this tension is negotiated. It is where digital optimization and artisanal excess collide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this sense, ornament is no longer something added at the end of production. It becomes a method of working. The excessive finishing, the over-investment in surface, the insistence on manual processes are not simply aesthetic choices. They are gestures that register the discomfort of making materially in a system that increasingly rewards immateriality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make ornament under these conditions is to insist that labor still matters, even when it is not fully visible. It is to embed time, effort, and bodily presence into objects that will primarily be experienced as images. Ornament becomes a way of leaving a trace of making within an economy that would otherwise erase it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recently, I produced a series of sculptural masses that appear to float in a void. These objects were not made to function as sculpture in any traditional sense. From the outset, they were conceived as production props for the camera and the screen: objects that exist temporarily in order to complete a photograph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":4527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4524"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4864,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions\/4864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}