Christoph Ohler
With my work I am exploring the possibilities of building steel-sculptures using only basic hand tools and a welder. The results are often shapes that represent 2-manifold surfaces embedded in 3-dimensional Euclidean space. I develop my sculptures by using elements like symmetry, duplication and sometimes knotted-ness. I am also fascinated by the idea of the Möbius band and I therefore let most of my 2-manifolds be single-sided.
This piece is inspired by the artwork of Eva Hild whom I met at
the 2018 Bridges conference. The idea was to build a similar
looking sculpture out of steel which, however, would be
single-sided. The sculpture represents a non-orientable 2-manifold
with a single border and it is almost entirely negatively
curved.
I built this shape by welding together many small discs of steel
with 30 mm diameter and 5mm thickness. Starting from a central
position, each disc is held in place and then welded to the
existing structure, thus letting the sculpture grow gradually. The
emerging rough curvature is then evened out by grinding. Adding
new material and smoothing the curvature is done iteratively. The
surface had rusted and is now brushed.