Stuart Sandford’s sculptures explore the rapidly shifting distinction between the virtual and physical realms by revisiting the Classical tradition of the ideal human form. Stuart finds the contemporary version of the exemplary in the carefully crafted online self-images that serve as subjects for the gay male gaze. He renders these through 3D scanning to create a digital template of the new archetype, to be then made solid in bronze, marble, and basalt using state-of-the-art sculpturing technologies. A life-size figure of Adlocutio, created with the porn star Sean Ford, depicts an alluring male in white lacquered bronze gazing into his phone as if addressing his adoring his many followers. Stuart’s reworking of the classical myth of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its tail, interprets this as a tale of self-love taken to its narcissistic extreme. Stuart’s sculptures present an unashamed examination of how conceptual and sexual attraction overlap and suggest our new idealism is rendered in the digital realm.
