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Factum Arte has collaborated for the first time with Danish-Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour on a monumental fibreglass sculpture to form part of 'Heirloom', a powerful reflection on the key themes of memory, history and identity that represents Denmark at the 58th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2019.

First, a cast was made using fibreglass and resin mixed with black powder in order to establish the deep black tone of the sculpture from the beginning; this was the first step in trying to capture the mattest possible black commercially available.

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The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was the oldest continuous manufacturing business in Great Britain until its closure in 2017, a history of traditional bell casting that stretched back almost 450 years to 1570, counting Big Ben and the Liberty Bell amongst its extraordinary legacy.

Sold to Raycliff Capital due to financial pressure in an industry on the decline in the modern age, the US property developers have submitted plans to turn the historic foundry into a ‘bell-themed boutique hotel’; a complete disregard for the rich heritage of one of the UK’s finest cultural and historical assets, and for its rightful function as a bell foundry. More details on this shameful proposal can be found here.

Our sister organisation Factum Foundation have partnered with the United Kingdom Historic Preservation Trust on a plan to re-open the foundry, re-equipped for the production of bells and art casting once again, which can be read in full here. You can help save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry by taking a moment to submit an objection to the boutique hotel proposal to the Tower Hamlets council. Information on how to do so can be found here.

In 2018, Factum Arte, developed and coordinated with Jan Hendrix the production of a series of tapestries depicting the mythological landscape of Yagul, in Southern Mexico. These tapestries are on display at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC) in Mexico City from May 05 to Sept. 22 2019 and will become a touring exhibition in the following year.

Factum Arte was involved in all the steps of the process, from the creation of digital high resolution files and tonal adjusts based on the original drawings to textile artistic advice on the fibre composition and the finishing of the manufactured piece.

Click here to read more about it.

Factum has collaborated with Sarah Sze on a two-part sculpture entitled ‘Split Stone (7:34)’, comprised of a natural boulder split in two like to a geode. The cut reveals a vivid image of the sky embedded into the surface of the stone.

By recording images in pixels and then fixing them in stone and pigment, Sze explores the fragility of time passing and our desire for weight and permanence in the face of both overwhelming natural forces and the ubiquitous images that surround us daily.

This work was installed at the National Roman Museum (Crypta Balbi) in Rome to coincide with Sze’s solo exhibition at the city's Gagosian Gallery (21/11/2018 - 27/01/2019) before being part of the 20 sculptures exhibited for the launch of Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center, until June 28 2019.

Learn more here.

An important exhibition on Dürer’s graphic corpus is currently on show at Palazzo Sturm in Bassano del Grappa, running until 30/09/2019. Curated by Chiara Casarin, the exhibition features more than 200 works by Dürer, including his celebrated Rhinoceros woodcut.

Dürer’s Rhinoceros woodcut recorded the exotic creature’s arrival in Europe, where it was exhibited in King Manuel I’s menagerie in Lisbon. As its fame spread Dürer drew the image we know, combining invention, folklore and an idiosyncratic zoology to concoct a fantastical creature that surpasses any observational study.

Factum Arte’s 3D sculptor has continued this beast’s strange and magical journey, transforming it from idea and image into form. Using organic modelling software, Irene Gaume sculpted the animal’s form, over which she mapped the lines of the woodcut giving them volume and relief in a style resembling a netsuke - the famous Japanese ivory carvings.

The workshop team materialised its intricate shape through 3D printing, silicon moulding, casting and hand finishing with bitumen. While the resulting sculptures appear to be carved in ivory, they act as a commentary on the fragility of the relationship between the human and the natural. An edition of 100 Rhinoceros sculptures accompany the exhibition and their sales will support the Museum of Bassano del Grappa.

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Albrecht Dürer is widely considered the finest printmaker of all time. His works feature in Albrecht Dürer. La collezione completa dei Remondini, an exhibition curated by Chiara Casarin, at the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa until Sept. 30.

To accompany this exhibition, the team at Factum Arte has made a film which captures the different printmaking techniques used by Dürer and his assistants. Following the hands of artisans, Impressions of Albrecht Dürer demonstrates the different manual and chemical procedures involved in engraving, etching and woodcut. Watch the video.

This work, commissioned by the Syrian artist for the 2019 Sharjah Art Biennial, began life with a chance discovery in a Damascus second-hand photography shop: a pile of silver gelatin negatives stuffed into a dusty white plastic bag, hidden away from sight.

Consisting of studio portraits from the 1950s to the 1970s, Sarkissian realised the unique beauty of these aged negatives that, although not of the highest photographic quality, portrays individuals of the past as well as “hint at the world they created and the time they were living in”.

An image from this collection was selected by Sarkissian, “a head-and-shoulders portrait of a woman in the prime of her life looking far into the unknown”, and given to Factum Arte to be scanned and enlarged (with the same proportions) as a large sculptural object measuring 113 cm wide, 193.5 cm high, and 8 cm thick.

Further information on the production of this sculpture can be found here.

Frequent Factum collaborator Grayson Perry was commissioned by Stonewall to design a pin badge celebrating the 30th anniversary of the British charity to be auctioned at their flagship ‘Equality Dinner’. A limited edition of 10 pieces were then produced at Factum Arte to form one of the top prizes at the fundraising event, which took place on March 14th 2019.

Details on the process, which involved 3D printing and injection of pigment-mixed resin, can be found here.

Since 2018, Factum Arte has been developing and coordinating the production of a series of works with Dutch artist Jan Hendrix that will be on display at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City. The exhibition will run from May 5th to September 22nd 2019, before going on tour the following year.

To find out more about the previous works produced at Factum in collaboration with Hendrix, please click here.

On the morning of the 1st March, the American photographer Mariana Cook presented her new series at a private viewing hosted by Factum Arte: 13 black-and-white images inspired by the fascinating variety of patterns and textures unintentionally thrust upon the tools and objects in use throughout Factum's workshop, ranging from a painter's vest, cast salt, and a butcher's knife.

The prints were formed through aquatinted copper plates being printed upon 300 gsm Somerset Satin paper with Charbonnel etching ink, producing the deep black in each print. The shape of the object, untouched by the inked plate, was then coated with clear gelatin over which a digital pigment print was precisely registered on Factum Arte's flatbed printer. The digitally printed elements were coated with a UV resistant varnish in order to enchance the difference between the black of the background and the tonal subtley of the 'fetishes', adding a physical dimension to the images.

These were shown alongside a group of large-scale photographs by Cook, printed on gesso-coated aluminium, depicting kamenitzas (indents in limestone that accumalate water and create the conditions for life) in Western Ireland and glacial erratics in New Zealand.

'The Oracle' began life as a 3D model provided by Shirazeh Houshiary; this gave the basis of its materialisation as a metal structure, that after several tests, was perfected, sanded-down, and hand painted.

The result is two snaking slender forms that twist in between each other; the resulting mixture of curves and turns creates an apparent harmony between the starkly opposing colours.

This sculpture was shown as part of Lehmann Maupin’s solo presentation of Houshiary's work at the inaugaral Frieze Art Fair LA, which ran from 15^th to 17^th February 2019.

More information on the production process behind this piece here.

Factum has collaborated with Sarah Sze on a two-part sculpture entitled ‘Split Stone (7:34)’, comprised of a natural boulder split in two like to a geode. The cut reveals a vivid image of the sky embedded into the surface of the stone.

By recording images in pixels and then fixing them in stone and pigment, Sze explores the fragility of time passing and our desire for weight and permanence in the face of both overwhelming natural forces and the ubiquitous images that surround us daily.

This work was installed at the National Roman Museum (Crypta Balbi) in Rome to coincide with Sze’s solo exhibition at the city's Gagosian Gallery (21st November 2018 - 27th January 2019).

Learn more here.
Image © Matteo D'Eletto, M3 Studio

Three statues created by Factum Arte, resulting from the recording of Antonio Canova's 'Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix' in 2013, have been officially unveiled at the reopening of the V&A Museum's famed Cast Courts, which took place on December 1st 2018. Whilst the bright white edition is a 3D stereolithographic printed resin painted white, the other two versions were both cast glass and plaster using moulds produced directly from a 3D print.

Read more about the facsimiles here.

For his first collaboration with Factum Arte, Ahmad Angawi decided to realize a series of Mangour Screens, now exhibited permanently at the British Museum as part of the new Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World, launched in October 2018.

These Mangour Screens reflect the great connection existing between digital and traditional craftsmanship and celebrate the ancient Islamic principles and rich cultural diversity Angawi was inspired by.

Click here to learn more.

© Image Courtesy of Ahmad Angawi

Using the specialist flat-bed printer available in our Madrid workshop, much of Savelev’s modern work is printed on gesso-coated aluminium; a material that complements the deep shadows present in his work as well as the multiple tonal layers involved in their production, with the photographer personally involved in every print himself.

Click here to see the complete portfolio.

Michael Hansmeyer has collaborated with Factum Arte to create the set design of Romeo Castellucci’s The Magic Flute / Die Zauberflöte, presented this week at the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie de Munt in Brussels.

Hansmeyer's piece is a significant example of computational architecture, showing the conversion of a geometry model into a monumental physical object. This new project testifies to the atmosphere of Factum Arte's workshop, that of a playground with a plurality of artistic possibilities, and embodies our obsessive commitment to pushing the boundaries that usually separate technology and craft skills. Learn more.

In 2018, photographer Maria Trabulo won the NOVO BANCO Revelacão Award which resulted in an exhibition entitled The Reinvention of Forgetting (November 30 2018 - January 29 2019) at the Fundação Serralves, Portugal.
This showcased her latest work made in conjunction with the Bode Museum, Berlin and inspired by Factum Arte and Factum Foundation's workshop.
For this occasion, a selection of large-scale prints of noisy 3D data were produced at the studio as well as a grayscale sculpture where the image is reproduced as a ghostly form, a double-sided piece consisting of a small torso, one positive and one negative.

Click here to know more about this project.

In 2015, a re-creation created by the foundation's sister company Factum Arte of the renowned stolen work by the Italian master Caravaggio was unveiled in its original location at the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo as part of the chapel's restoration.

The modern history and potential future of the lost piece is detailed in a new article from The Guardian featuring the re-creation and our director Adam Lowe that can be found here, whilst further information on Factum Arte's facsimile can be found here.