Oil Plastic Sculptures by Stefan Gross

Stranger Flower.

Tulpenvaas.

Flower Bomb.

Daisynet.

Flower Bonanza.

Flower Bonanzas.

Stefan Gross is a German-born artist now based in the Netherlands who works primarily with his own experimental ‘oil plastic’ material. Gross was originally trained as a stained glass artisan, working for a workshop that restored church windows prior to inventing his ‘oil plastic’ in 2006. The material is made from dying recycled industrial thermoplastic with classic oil paints, creating a malleable substance that behaves as both a surface and paint in one. At room temperature, the translucent material behaves like glass, which allows Gross to extend it into abstract three-dimensional forms.

Gross says his time working for the stained glass workshop piqued the curiosity that led him to create ‘oil plastic’. “I was always looking at the small, colourful glass samples we had propped up on the windowsill – all these possibilities of colour at close range. The craftsmen there were very inventive, making all kinds of things from wood, steel, acrylic glass, mosaic and concrete.”

Gross is largely inspired by complex natural ecosystems and structures that are derailed, sometimes unintentionally, by human intervention. He explores the notion of growth in society, creating nature-inspired forms as an ironic metaphor to comment on the beauty and potential of industrial production and human ambition. Creative influences include the work of Dutch-Indonesian symbolist Jan Toorop and Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etchings of a dystopian Rome, both of whom explored the current and future state of human civilisation.

Lettuce.

SciFi.

Daisy Tree.

Synthetic nature.

His ‘oil plastic’ material is highly pigmented, appearing almost luminous when seen in direct light. Gross uses iron and blowtorch to weld pieces together, creating dripping, quirky shapes with an inherent kinetic quality. Further inspired by the industrial surrounds of Rotterdam harbour where his studio is located, Gross ponders global positions on issues such as deforestation, climate change and eugenics, questioning idealized versions of humanity versus reality.

On plastic, Gross says, “It is an invention which is beautiful and destructive at the same time. It defines our era and maybe helps to destroy our environment completely in the future. I want to visualise this phenomenon by creating pleasing beautiful and threatening works at the same time.”

Works are named in a direct, literal manner that belies their layered and conceptual meanings, such as a series including ‘Lettuce’, ‘Lettuce Mixed’, ‘Salad’ and ‘Wild Salad’, each a perfectly square wall sculpture of realistic, waxy green leaves. Other forms are more abstract, such as his ‘Stranger Flowers’, chaotic bouquets of flower-like forms that appear both bright and colourful, and decomposing. The flowers are Gross’ interpretations of what nature might potentially look like in the future – wild and hostile, having survived the harshest of environmental interventions.

Gross continues to perfect his ‘oil plastic’ material, now producing it using induction plates and adding a special induction room to his studio where he can transform the plastic into delicate filigrees.