Ian Dawson is a UK-based artist whose recent work focuses on sculpting with 3D printing. His works often appear in flux, reflecting ongoing material transformation and an interest in plasticity. Drawing on digital scans from archives, archaeology, architecture, and landscape, Dawson translates these sources into sculptural forms that explore how objects carry labour and knowledge through time.
Ian Dawson is a UK-based artist whose recent work focuses on sculpting with 3D printing. His works often appear in flux, reflecting ongoing material transformation and an interest in plasticity. Drawing on digital scans from archives, archaeology, architecture, and landscape, Dawson translates these sources into sculptural forms that explore how objects carry labour and knowledge through time.
The work presented in this exhibition, New Face in Hell (2026), marks a significant development within this practice. The sculpture assembles vertically stacked, 3D-printed elements derived from scanned portraits of Albert Einstein into an antenna-like form. Rather than functioning as a monument, the work holds repetition and interruption in balance through processes of translation and sequencing.
Dawson has exhibited internationally across the UK, Europe, Asia, and the United States, including exhibitions at Tate Modern (Tate Exchange, 2017) and Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles (2025), with solo exhibitions in New York (James Cohan Gallery), London (Modern Art Stuart Shave), and Paris (Galerie Xippas). He is the author of Making Contemporary Sculpture (Crowood Press), and his work is held in public and private collections worldwide, including the McNay Art Museum, Texas, the West Collection, USA, and collections supported by Arts Council England.