Also attached to this bent-up metal beam-armature are a small piece of wood and a second, relatively smaller metal beam element, which, in turn, each support a vertical leg of the larger metal beam-armature.

Before the sculpture is an object, it is – for the artist – a process which is designed to be replicated and reproduced through a broad spectrum of scales.

The work consists of the following 5 process-steps:

1. A beam is bent in three points, forming an armature.

2. Two wires span the uprights of this armature and a third, longer (and, thus, more deeply hanging) wire is suspended down the middle of the first two wires.

3. A tarp is stretched over the three wires, resulting in a hanging “hammock” form.

4. A cement mixture is poured into this hammock form.

5. After the cement dries, both the tarp and the outer two wires of the armature-form are removed so that a curved concrete shape (the piece of shit) is left suspended in air by the “third wire” which still spans the upright points of the beam.

One is, thus, provided with a blueprint for the creation of the “same shit” on “different island(s).”

As one evaluates the sculpture in terms of form, one evaluates it as a set of instructions as well.

It’s virtual art.

The “painterly-ness” of each image, though, is mutated by the de-texturing (or mapping of texture) accompanying one’s view of their subject matter through the glossy “screen” of transparent acrylic which functions as the surface of each cube.

The result is less the experience of viewing a painting first-hand (as in, say, a museum) and more the experience of viewing a painting remotely (as through, say, the screen of a computer).

In the process of describing the experience of textural remoteness, however, van den Dorpel creates a short-circuit to a whole new type of texture:

That of virtual space.

He does so in at least two ways:

1. Van den Dorpel’s technique in these works is to paint on the surface of the acrylic which – in the final product – will be viewed as the inside (as opposed to the, more traditional, outside) of the cube sculpture.

One’s view of the painting process is, thus, reversed.

The first layers of paint applied to the surface are the most visible and everything else is masked through, not overpainting, but underpainting.

The virtual presence of this painting’s absence is, thus, activated.

2. Similarly, the mobility of the relatively very light cubes and their subsequent malleability into almost instantaneous re-arrangement nudge the viewer’s understanding of the work’s physical “presence” away from, say, the mass and volume of Minimalist cubes and closer to the virtual 3D space of Second Life.