Art at 33 – Joseph Hillier

Art at 33 – Joseph Hillier

ART AT 33 is a changing sculpture exhibition, showcasing a varied programme of artwork in the reception of 33 Davies Street.  The exhibition has been designed to introduce different types of sculpture, techniques and artistic language to tenants and visitors of the building, helping to create an enjoyable and stimulating space.

Working closely with Grosvenor and Stow and with the tenants of 33 Davies Street, we are delighted to present a collection of sculpture by Joseph Hillier. In this collection he harnesses the awesome possibilities of digital technologies to create a body of work that ‘questions the digital revolution we are living through’ using the primal power of the human form as his means of expression.  He is analysing, reducing and interpreting the human form and its movement using 3D motion sensing, printing and animation, positioning sculpture as the vital interface between the digital and the real world. The works in this exhibition are a poignant analysis of humanity’s relationship to our new world of ephemeral data structures and their reconfiguration of time and space. It is Hillier’s way of holding onto and making physical some of the visual information around us which is continually slipping away.

The unique aspect of Hillier’s approach is that he manages to master digital techniques whilst avoiding the traps involved, namely the making of somehow soulless forms. He avoids ‘thinking like a programmer’ to produce works that are vital, in movement and expressive of the human condition, often mimicking the process of machines while painstakingly hand welding laser cut parts.

In the artist’s words, “humanity grows when we admit we are part of the natural world. Despite our intellect and technology we are still apes. By depicting man as primal, through the most recent and sophisticated bits of technology, the result of our common global culture of things, I hope I can point to something fundamental and unifying about our condition”.