In the context of changing material approaches in sculpture through the new opportunities of soft materials after 1960

Variety of the materials used in artistic objects throughout the history of humanity has evolved parallelly with the advancement of technology and accessibility to the new materials. Beliefs, traditions, technologic and economic changes of the societies determined the quality of the artistic productions while affecting sculptures' the materials. In the history, the first examples of primitive sculptures were created by using materials such as animal bones, stones which easy to dress, wood and clay. The most striking examples of the sculptures created from the cities of ancient period to the 19th century, which is hailed as the beginning point of the modern age, are the ones which reflect the strength, divinity, richness and aesthetic values of the political and religious entities. In order for these sculptures that are created within this context to be permanent and magnificent, processable ores, metals and various stones which are durable and economic were preferred. Until modernism, the emulation of the Ancient Greek Art is concentric with the desire to manifest a universal and ideal sense of beauty. While the search for the absolute externalized the temporariness of the arts, it directed the sculptors to the use of durable and stable materials which are more resistant to the decaying effects of time. With the help of the Industrial Revolution, amount of the artistic materials increased. Through the mechanization produced materials has increased, cheapened and got easier to access. These materials caught the eyes of the artists and paved way for experimental uses. New soft materials such as fabric, latex, rubber, nylon, paper, rope and fiber were started to picked up as sculpture materials in this period. With the experimental style of postmodernism which came after the 1960s, sculptors began creating different representations. Various aspects such as stretching and flexion, fuzziness, compression, vi contraction and shrinkage, folding, spreading and wrinkling helped soft materials to provide new conceptual and figural opportunities. Within the plastic scope of sculpture, instead of the idea of permanence, new meaning and form structures such as the thought the artists are trying to convey, material itself and artistic production gained significance.