How does an artist resist reality? In this film, artist Diana Al-Hadid creates sculptures and drawings that embrace illusionism and the unknown, culminating in the exhibition The Vanishing Point (2012) at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. “I want to explore the limits of my own thinking,” says Al-Hadid. The artist begins with a careful study of her materials—wax, clay, fiberglass, and bronze—and then experiments in her Williamsburg studio, getting the materials to “misbehave.”

Looking to Renaissance and Mannerist artists such as Robert Campin, Hans Memling, and Jacopo da Pantormo, Al-Hadid finds inspiration for her sculptures in the way paintings take liberties with the laws of physics. “For me to get a sculpture to lift off the floor…that’s the first way to rebel,” says the artist. Al-Hadid also reveals how her work evolved from realist drawings, done as a child, to her current sculptures and drawings made from the slow buildup of layers.