Sculpture Made by Bees

By John Farrier in Art on Jun 23, 2010 at 9:50 am

Dutch designer Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny made a sculpture of Jesus that was completed by bees. He erected a sealed glass container with his mold inside. Libertiny then released 40,000 bees who worked on the honeycombed surface of the mold:

over the course of the fair, 40 000 worker bees were released into the case to complete a wax honeycomb structure over the figure of a martyred christ rising out of the chaos, his weight seeming to be upheld by the mass strength of the swarm. the figure within the vitrine is made of a laser sintered framework in which the industrious bees created a honeycomb skin over before filling each cell with the honey they produce. then bees worked to remove the honey from the cells and return it to the beehive, cleaning the figure back to the wax cells they originally created.

More pictures and a video at the link.

Link via Nerdcore | Artist’s Website | Photo: Carpenters’ Workshop Gallery


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  1. Kalel
    Jun 23rd, 2010 at 9:57 am

    Death, where is thy sting?

  2. tim h
    Jun 23rd, 2010 at 11:23 am

    A guy named Garnet Puett was making bee-completed sculptures in the 80s. He has one or two in a museum in DC, can’t remember which. His weren’t figurative aside from a couple of busts – they were more about letting the bees go nuts on a given structure.

    I don’t bring this up as a “Been Done” point, but rather as a “Folks have gone before you, the novelty is gone, make it interesting in other ways” way.

    When I spoke with the folks showing Gazbdil’s work at the art fair in Chelsea at the old Dia – they’d trumpeted the novelty as the point of the work and had no idea about Puett.

  3. sabrina
    Jun 23rd, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    Maybe he just had the bee-Jesus scared out of him.

  4. ted
    Jun 23rd, 2010 at 3:50 pm

    Kalel. More like, “Jesus, where is thy thing?”

    Or is this a gender-neutral Jesus?

  5. Frau
    Jun 23rd, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    Mmmmm Honey Jesus goes well with Chocolate Jesus on my my Jesus Toast.

  6. Tinderbox
    Jul 12th, 2010 at 6:50 pm

    sabrina ftw!


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