Although many sculptors and artists use wire components for their work, Robert-Ortis takes the idea to new levels. What he is doing today is truly unique.
Sculptures by Matthieu Robert Ortis
When you see an elephant as a sculpture, you have an expectation that this perspective will remain the same when viewing the art from different perspectives. You wouldn’t think that the famous Statue of David would turn into something like Athena if you looked at it from a different angle.
Sculptor Matthieu Robert-Ortis would disagree. He believes that different perspectives make art interesting and unique. His moving wire pieces are evidence that what your eyes see from one angle doesn’t need to be the same as it is from another.
One of his most famous sculptures is a wireframe that looks like an elephant when you see it from a side profile. When you step in front of the piece, it suddenly turns into two giraffes.
Robert-Ortis has made a few other sculptures with similar properties, including one that turns from being a man into a crab. With another, he created a snake seemingly wrapped around an asteroid that turns into two people who are working on a chore together.
Wire Is a Common Medium for Artists to Use
Although many sculptors and artists use wire components for their work, Robert-Ortis takes the idea to new levels. What he is doing today is truly unique.
He developed this style of wire sculpting only three years ago, calling the work anamorphose or metamorphose. The first is a description of abstraction and figuration, while the latter is the idea of adding a third step.
You would get a second dose of figuration, such as when the elephant turns into two giraffes after walking by it. Robert-Ortis uses both so that the realism concepts with the work translate into a positive viewing experience.
The sculptor is still in his 20s, although the work he creates is earning worldwide acclaim. Robert-Ortis says he became interested in this medium while attending his studies in Lyon. He says that he disagreed with the school’s conceptual approach to teaching art, causing him to drop out to paint and draw alone.
After he started mapping out these drawing concepts, Robert-Ortis turned them into the wire frame sculptures that people adore today.
Several influences are found in the artist’s work. The most notable inspirations come from George Rousse, who is a French contemporary artist specializing in large-scale photographs that produce realistic alterations of an existing space. You can also see the work of Markus Raets, a Swiss artist who uses anamorphic illusions to explore the boundaries of human perception.
As of today, Robert-Ortis has created over 40 sculptures, with about three-quarters of them falling into the anamorphose description. He also has a viewership of more than 80 million people across his various online platforms.
It Has Been a Long Journey for Robert-Ortis
The first sculpture that Robert-Ortis came from a grocery store riding toy that required a euro in the slot to be taken. Once he had the piece created, he began replacing the currency signed with the O in his name when signing his artwork.
His goal with this shift in the signature is to highlight the various financial issues artists face when creating something. Even if they receive compensation for their work, the time it takes to produce something from an hourly perspective is nowhere near what other professions earn.
Although artists like Picasso can see impressive returns on their work in their lifetime, those names are the exception to the rule. It’s not unusual to see some artists earning nothing in some years.
When Robert-Ortis returned to his first sculpture after creating a few other pieces, he began to think about adding more items to his collection. His mother displays that first creative effort in their home, and one of her friends convinced Matthieu to hold an exhibition of his works.
Once everyone started seeing what he could do with wiring, the popularity of his pieces began rising exponentially.
When he was smaller, Robert-Ortis says that he was more interested in playing sports and music. He played the guitar and the piano while doing some slacklining and rock climbing. He tried his hand at rapping but discovered that the artistic world was much more mysterious.
Robert-Ortis makes a small prototype of his idea first with the wire sculpture. If he likes how it turns out, the bigger piece gets created. It typically takes him about two months to finish a project.
You can find more information and examples of his work on his YouTube channel.
