Oliver Laric – Rock Hyphen Orchid Wasp
‘Rock Hyphen Orchid Wasp’ extends from Oliver Laric's ongoing exploration of metamorphosis and the anthropomorphisation of animals. In this latest project, Laric moves beyond a single morph dimension for the first time to reveal a non-linear, decentralised and interconnected relationship between classical categories.
Rock Hyphen Orchid Wasp is a spectrum of 100 hybrid forms arranged as a grid. Viewers can explore the complete grid on the Zien website and examine individual works in 3D. Each work is available as an NFT that can be redeemed for a physical sculpture—3D printed, finished with opalescent paint and wall-mounted on a custom stainless steel structure. Laric’s grid of uncanny forms are derived from the four nominal elements, creating combinations like: Rock: 9.88%, Hyphen: 34.57%, Orchid: 12.35%, Wasp: 43.21%. Working with friend and collaborator 3D artist Alik Kadoum to create these forms, Laric described the process to be extremely complex yet enriching.
For Mondrian and Malevich, the grid symbolised order and abstraction, breaking from traditional art. Later critics saw it as representing modernist rigidity. Today, the grid permeates digital life through pixels, interfaces and databases.
The orchid and wasp reference comes from a popular Deleuze and Guattari metaphor. Certain orchids mimic the appearance and scent of female wasps, luring male wasps to attempt mating. The orchid becomes-wasp and the wasp becomes-orchid.
This concept of "becoming" demonstrates how entities redefine themselves through relationships, challenging static identities.
In crypto terms, the blockchain “becomes” a community embodying trust and shared rules, while the community “becomes” a machine by operating a decentralised, algorithmic framework. In Laric's project, the rock (an unofficial icon of NFTs) and the hyphen (a digital blip and symbol of hybridity) reinforce connections to ideas of decentralisation and tokenisation.
“Rock Hyphen Orchid Wasp” is a complex development of Laric’s continued interest in metamorphosis, initially manifesting in a 2014 video diving into the history of transformation within a 100 year span of animation history. The video “Untitled” brings together scenes of metamorphosis, redrawn frame by frame as scalable vectors without background. A scene from the video “Untitled” lead to a commission of Laric’s first permanent public artwork, installed in Middelkerke in Belgium as part of the 2021 Beaufort Triennial. The sculpture “Metamorphoses” shows a toad transforming into a table in five stages.
In 2024 Laric realised two sculptural works depicting transformations from a naturalistic state to an anthropomorphised iteration. A disneyfication of a cicada is currently on view as a public sculpture in 2024 at Jing‘an International Sculpture Project in Shanghai.
