Bambi Kirschner’s 3D-visuals present a bizarre, hyperreal 21st Century digital girl's world

“I was stuck at art school mostly drawing and painting and never felt as though it released much of what I wanted or needed to say with my art,” Bambi Kirschner tells It’s Nice That, setting the scene for her foray into the hyperreal, pink-infused, Internet-inspired world of her 3D visuals. “I felt as though I was just kind of floating through my university life and felt very stationary in the mediums I was told to use.”

Discovering artist Jesse Kanda’s collaboration with Arca sent Bambi’s work in new directions. “Jesse tends to create these beautiful yet disturbing life forms that for some reason I related to. I loved how he was able to convey the pretty and ugly of the human form through a visual,” Bambi explains. “I wanted to learn how to do this myself and managed to find a class at my university that taught some basic 3D animation fundamentals but I didn’t learn much and decided to do some research and teach myself.”

Everything Bambi has learnt of her practice has been through YouTube tutorials and the magic of trial and error. “As I progressed with this medium, I then discovered other female artist’s on Instagram doing 3D visuals as well, and was inspired by how they chose to work through this medium also. What I love about 3D is that there’s no limit with it, it’s sculpture, painting and film all in one.”

The artist’s work looks to fight back against the obsession with perfection prevalent in the world today, and most notably how it impacts women. Whilst Bambi creates a self-proclaimed “fake world” with her work, it’s one on the opposite end of the spectrum to the fabricated lives of “Insta-famous models promoting themselves on social networks,” that has unfortunately become the scrolling norm. “Even if the public knows it’s fake, and the person creating this illusion is aware it’s fake, we are still somehow drawn to the image, the perfectionism, the hallucinatory. That’s why it’s so captivating to me, I want to create this hallucination for myself but in a completely computer-generated way.”

“The first piece of 3D work I ever made was a rose with an eyeball in the centre. The rose bloomed and at the end you were exposed to its gaze. It was creepy but innocent at the same time, and I think that’s something that hasn’t really changed in my work from the beginning,” Bambi says. “I reflect back what I see on the internet and that includes colour schemes and style. I’m able to add more to a colour by adding a hint of metallic or gloss to a material. I think this added “gloss” plays a role into challenging perfectionism.”

“There’s something quite creepy about perfection; it’s not human,” says Bambi. “Perfection can’t exist in our world, but we believe it does on the internet. It always makes you question what’s really hiding underneath.” Her 3D visuals ignite their viewer to seek the truth behind the fake lives we are so immune to questioning on Instagram. “I think that’s why we all get so excited when we finally see the imperfections in people we idolise, we feel closer to them,” she says. “But most of the time there’s a saturation of photoshopped, idealistic representations of the human body that we become exposed to. What I create is similar in the way that it’s a deception of the truth; un-human. I present perfect beings; a frightening concept.”

In Bambi’s work, the girls are “fake and everything is a pastel paradise” but through this she embraces the insanity of our digital on-screen world whilst also making the viewer aware of how, ultimately, it’s one of make believe. Her pastel-hued 3D visuals are bizarre, challenging, dreamlike, rule-breaking. “Bizarre holds no limitations,” Bambi puts forward. “There’s no rules to bizarre. I tend to feel so trapped in the rules of everyday life that when I’m finally able to express myself I feel free to do whatever I want.”

“When I work with 3D, I’m able to sculpt scenario’s that could be seen in dreams or nightmares. My work is a collection of emotions I felt at the time, feelings of needing to escape, euphoria, desperation or loneliness. Making these worlds is a means of escape from my current situation and I hope to bring whoever views my work on the journey with me,” she says.