Get a 3-D-Printed Sculpture of Yourself at the Armory Show

Examples of Karin Sander's 3D-printed portraits. Photo: Ben Sutton.

Among the more unusual installations at the 2014 Armory Show is that in the booth of Vienna-based Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder (801), whose back room contains all kind of strange metallic apparatuses outfitted with ominous lenses. These are 3-D body-scanning devices and a part of German artist Karin Sander‘s long-running, nomadic, digital sculpture studio practice. Interested collectors can plunk down US$25,000, step into the booth, pose for the scanners, and a few days later they’ll receive a full-body, 1:5-scale plaster portrait of themselves.

When artnet New passed by at the beginning of the day on Wednesday, the scanning chamber was empty. “Depending on how many requests we get, it should take about three to five days for sculptures to be delivered,” a booth attendant explained. “The sculptures are available in color or in gray-scale.”

Passing by a couple of hours later, artnet News noticed that the curtain had been pulled shut; someone was in the process of being miniaturized.