The notion of 3D art may have once conjured pop culture kitsch—grainy early holograms, Magic Eye posters—but at a moment when virtual and augmented reality, 3D printing and immersive approaches have dramatically increased creative potential, 3D imagery has become a new and significant frontier in contemporary art.
That’s the guiding premise of Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA) wide-ranging survey of 3D art objects and practices—the first such exhibition in North America, tracing the history and evolution of 3D media from the Victorian era to the present day. Through over sixty objects, the show will explore how, through our own binocular vision (images received via two eyes and then processed into a single volumetric picture), we interact with mirrors, lenses, filters and movement to actively complete the illusion of 3D works.
Through the show’s five thematic sections, viewers will be exposed to pieces and creators that challenge traditional definitions of art and artists. From the earliest stereoscopic images of the 1830s through the proliferation of mass-market visual culture in the 1950s to the experimental art of the 1960s and 1970s, visitors will engage directly with 3D devices (many works will require wearing devices like View-Masters and polarized glasses) to see how, as LACMA CEO Michael Govan has put it, these artists—some well-known, but many of whom are really scientists, engineers, designers and directors—“have experimented with theories of vision and perception to represent, distill, and reinvent objects and the emotions they engender.” 5905 Wilshire Blvd.
