Vasilisa Lipatova: an extraordinary artist who creates her own Space on Earth

Contemporary artists are constantly evolving, trying new techniques, and finding tools to work in often the most unexpected objects. The hero of this Afisha.London material is Vasilisa Lipatova, an artist who works in the technique of manual 3D printing, creating truly cosmic art objects using a 3D pen.

Contemporary artist and sculptor Vasilisa Lipatova creates art objects that amaze the imagination. The artist’s art objects live in interiors, exteriors, and a few years ago, flat images appeared — canvases.

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All the works of the artist are united by one extraordinary technique. In 2014, Vasilisa began looking for a way to work directly with the material to avoid the lengthy process of producing a sculpture. She tried many options and eventually developed her own technique: manual 3D printing. This technique is based on weaving large air volumes with a thin molten plastic thread.

“Plastic is the best material for my art, you can do anything with it — melt, glue, cut, stretch, compress, paint or influence it in other ways. And the technique of manual 3D printing allows me to create sculptures, literally in the air.” — says Vasilisa.

The main tool of the artist’s work is an ordinary 3D pen, which in the hands of Vasilisa turns into a real art tool. In the world of contemporary art, there are no artists who would work in this technique.

The technique was such a great success that one of the artist’s works Cloud I in 2018 was accepted into the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery — one the world’s largest art museum. In 2020, a personal exhibition of Vasilisa’s space works Grounding was held at the Vinzavod Center for Contemporary Art in the FainArt Gallery. All works of the artist are united by the theme of Space.

In 2021, the artist realized that she wanted to create works on an even larger scale and duplicated the technique of manual 3D printing in metal, which allowed her to create objects up to 10 meters long or more.

The works in metal became the basis of the international project Space Atlas. Since 2021, the artist has started creating land art and public art objects in unusual places. She continued to work with the theme of Space, but on a completely different scale: if earlier objects could be admired in museums and at exhibitions of modern art, now you can lie on clouds, swing and even climb on them.

This project was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Buryatia, and one of the objects was included in the collection of the National Museum of Buryatia. Another of the objects was included in the shortlist of the All-Russian competition of art objects, and another one began to be created in an international residence.

“This is just the beginning, now I am developing interactive space art objects that will interact even more with the environment and the viewer.” — states Vasilisa.

The Space Atlas project was a huge success, so the artist thought about a way to give the viewer the opportunity to interact with objects without leaving her city, as well as to get a piece of the international project for herself. This is how the canvases of the Space Atlas series appeared, plastic galaxies, universes and plexuses of constellations began to grow directly from the canvas plane.

Vasilisa Lipatova, Land — art and public — art object “Sky-High Dreams” from the project “Space Atlas”; 2021; Metall; 20x7x5 meter

Here the artist again used her manual 3D printing technique, but with a completely different goal — to make the 2D plane of the canvas three-dimensional.

The canvases were also included in the collections of various institutions, including the Ruarts Foundation for the Support of Contemporary Art and the ArtVesta Consulting Gallery in Cyprus. Now the works are on commissions in several other museums.

The Space that the artist creates grows every year, and more and more opportunities open up for Vasilisa.

Cover photo: Vasilisa Lipatova, Interior art — object “Cloud I”; 2015; Plastic, Manual 3D printing; 88x46x40 centimeters

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