Marc Fornes is a registered architect and leads THEVERYMANY, a studio based in New York, creating colourful, curvilinear, architectural, and organic forms that are integrated into buildings or stand alone in the landscape. These structures are at once exact, geometric, and computational, while achieving the appearance of biological structure. The pieces are called “Crawling Assemblies”, created out of Structural Stripes,” which is a building system developed by Marc Fornes where each creation is made up of thousands of custom, interlocking parts. The organic shapes are achieved through “tangential continuity” defined by Marc Fornes as “continuous skin along direction of forces connected by tangential overlaps” — where the force of the structure is distributed over the surface of the structure allowing for the artworks’ curving, organic forms.
Many of the installations can be climbed or walked through; the holes in the interlocking pieces allow light to pass through the structure creating a visual experience within the sculpture; “Each public artwork aims to provide a unique spatial experience for its visitors, while also contributing to the visual identity of a place and catalysing community engagement.”
The structures mould into the physical spaces and structures where they are located, sometimes looking like something was grown, rather than built. These artworks demonstrate a type of design and orientation to public art that integrates architecture, planning, and craftsmanship in its artistic production.
Ariel Macdonald (Univ. of Alberta)