The Abstract Universe: Microcosm/Macrocosm
January 23 – April 15, 2012
Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery
Annunciation Center
College of Saint Elizabeth
2 Convent Road
Morristown, NJ 07960
www.cse.edu
www.maloneyartgallery.org
Hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday
2:00 – 6:00 PM
or by appointment
Contact:
973-290-4314
973-290-4378
artgallery@cse.edu
Closed Federal and College Holidays
This exhibition and related programs are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency
The Abstract Universe: Microcosm/Macrocosm
Starting more than 30,000 years ago with cave painters and sculptors, artists have been trying to understand and document the visible natural world. Millennia later, Leonardo da Vinci (1452 -1519), the renowned Italian Renaissance artist and scientist used his esthetic skills to sketch out not just scientific observations of nature, but also speculative ideas and engineering designs in his sketchbooks and drawings while using his portraits and religious paintings to document concrete anatomical, atmospheric, botanical and mathematical concepts. The entwining of science and art has only accelerated since then. Today, scientists exploring the microcosm and the macrocosm often use digital and artistic means to demonstrate what they actually see as well as what they conjecture may be occurring in their specific fields of inquiry. Their investigations and images have, in turn, inspired artists working in many different styles and materials. This exhibition specifically focuses on some of the many contemporary artists who create non-figurative, abstract art that signals their backgrounds in, and/or their fascination with, disciplines such as anatomy, astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry, engineering, entomology, geology, oceanography, ornithology and physics, to name a few.
Inspired by various aspects of biology, Richard L. Dana, Michele Fraichard, and Valerie Huhn have been integrating cellular images and events into their artworks. Australian artist Eleanor Gates-Stuart has had access to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) / Australian Biosecurity Intelligence Network (ABIN) image database and has been working to create powerful compositions of the art/science intersect. Anna Beaver re-conceptualizes the capillaries of the lungs in Alevoli while Michele Levante photographs a skull in an upside down manner so that it remains a bony, but abstracted, presence. Lorrie Fredette focuses on the beauty and horror of keloidal scarring in her nine-part relief piece, Overgrowing the Boundaries, and Deanna C. Lee twirls and twists what look like muscles or hair into a convulsing mass in Green Wave. Both Fredette and Gates-Stuart also focus on viruses in their sculptural and video work respectively. Pinpointing a cancer cell in Pancreas/Sagebrush, Kay Kenny mixes “microscopic images from [her] old histology textbook with close-up photographs of objects visible in the environment” to understand the interconnectedness of life. As painter Will Suarez notes, investigation, analysis and then synthesis, is an approach useful both for making art and conducting scientific research. His painting, All Praise Due, is a celebration of Earth’s botanical richness. Abstracted birds populate Carlos Frias’s Ornithology while insects in Buzz-ing images by Gates-Stuart and Paula Overbay suggest organized chaos. Linda Stillman’s gridded daily paintings use cloud formations as a meteorological/personal diary. In contrast, Toni Thomas’s sweeping painting on fabric shaped like a Native American tipi is a vehicle to portray intense atmospheric colors at sunset. Nancy J. Ori’s photographic glance into the world of an aquarium documents water flow in miniature while Paul Dacey’s Deluge II records the impact of global weather patterns as fast-moving oceanographic ripples flooding across seven circles (continents?!). From a bird’s eye perspective, Kiyomo Baird’s red, black and white monotype, Tsunami, portrays a tidal wave’s destructive impact caused by geological shifts.
Astronomy, physics and the science surrounding these fields inspired Adel and Mary Gorgy’s image of the Cosmic Alphabet where equations explaining the physics of the universe “permeate” space. LaThoriel Badenhausen’s sculpture posits a humorous surrealistic take on String Theory, while the more serious semi-spherical Hyperstrings by Carol Prusa refers to fractals, unseen connections in nature and the many dimensions of what is now called the multiverse. Kiyoko Sakai’s Curved Light plays with the concept of bending particles or waves of energy. Lisa G. Westheimer uses cosmic collisions and meteors as inspiration for her ceramic sculptures and Emily Barnett and scientist Tom Vogt designed Blue Dot to explore the meteoric events that resulted in the creation of our moon. The moon also figures prominently in chemist Ted Largman’s mixed media box, The Great Shuttlecock in the Sky. Gianluca Bianchino’s site-specific assemblage installation, Galactic Edge, alludes to the Hubble Space Telescope and cosmic exploration while Larry Ross’s intricate two-dimensional exploration of jumbled machine pieces could easily be an image of a time machine blown apart. Finally, comparing Michael Gale’s Jupiter, actually a photograph of soap bubbles, and Assunta Sera’s Edge On, a view of an unknown astronomical event/object, reminds us of the intriguing parallels of the microcosmic and macrocosmic universes that surround us in actuality and in art.
Virginia Fabbri Butera, Ph.D., Director, Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery
This exhibition and related programs are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency
The Abstract Universe: Microcosm/Macrocosm Exhibition and Price List
LaThoriel Badenhausen
2010
String, hair, pins, feathers
Collection of the Artist
0
Kiyomi Baird
Tsunami
2011
Monotype
Collection of the Artist
00
Kiyomi Baird
Middle East
2010
Photogram
Collection of the Artist
00
Kiyomi Baird
Intergalactic
2009
Mixed media on canvas
Collection of the Artist
00
Emily Barnett and Tom Vogt
Blue Dot
1996
Cyanotype with chine collé
Collection of the artists
00
Anna C. Beaver
Alveoli
2011
Collograph
Collection of the Artist
5
Gianluca Bianchino
Galactic Edge
2012
Mixed Media
Collection of the Artist
$ 2500
Paul Dacey
Deluge II
2010
Acrylic on 7 plastic discs
Collection of the Artist
00
Richard Dana
Le Voyage Fantastique
2010
Acrylic on wood
Collection of the Artist
,000
Michele Fraichard
Broken Waters
2011
Oil on canvas
Collection of the Artist
0
Michele Fraichard
Liquid Birth I
2011
Mixed Media on Canvas
Collection of the Artist
0
Lorrie Fredette
Atmospheric Causes (2)
2009
Beeswax, tree resin, muslin, brass, nylon line
Collection of the Artist
0
Lorrie Fredette
Overgrowing the Boundaries, 3 – 14
2010
Beeswax, tree resin, muslin, Birch plywood
Collection of the Artist
50 (or sold for 0 each)
Carlos Frias
Ornithology
2011
Acrylic on canvas
Collection of the Artist
00
Michael Gale
Jupiter
2011
Photograph
11 x 14”
Collection of the Artist
0
Eleanor Gates-Stuart
Virus
2011
DVD--18 mins.
©Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) /
Australian Biosecurity Intelligence Network (ABIN)
©ABIN/CSIRO 2011
0
Eleanor Gates-Stuart
Untitled (Buzz)
2011
Digital ink-jet print
©Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) /
Australian Biosecurity Intelligence Network (ABIN)
0
Eleanor Gates-Stuart
Untitled (Crack)
2011
Digital ink-jet print
©Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) /
Australian Biosecurity Intelligence Network (ABIN)
0
Eleanor Gates-Stuart
Untitled (Corral)
2011
Digital ink-jet print
©Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) /
Australian Biosecurity Intelligence Network (ABIN)
0
Adel and Mary Gorgy
Cosmic Alphabet
2011
Archival Pigment Ink Print
Collection of the Artist
0
Adel Gorgy
The Four Letters of Life
2011
Archival Pigment Ink Print
Collection of the Artist
0
Adel Gorgy
Olbers’ Paradox on Earth
2010
Archival Pigment Ink Print
Collection of the Artist
0
Valerie Huhn
Untitled
2011-2012
Video, mixed media
Collection of the Artist
NFS
Kay Kenny
Pancreas/Sagebrush
1999
Gum bichromate on watercolor paper
Collection of the Artist
0
Theodore Largman
The Great Shuttlecock in the Sky
1996
Mixed Media
Collection of the Artist
NFS
Deanna C. Lee
Green Wave
2008
Watercolor and acrylic on wood
Collection of the Artist
00
Michelle Levante
Interior of Human Skull 03
2008
Digital C-Print
16 x20” framed
Collection of the Artist
0
Nancy J. Ori
Aquarium
2009
Photograph
Collection of the Artist
0
Paula Overbay
Buzz
2011
Acrylic on paper
Collection of the Artist
00
Paula Overbay
The Birth of Synapse
2011
Acrylic on paper
Collection of the Artist
00
Paula Overbay
The Birth of Falling Stars
2011
Acrylic on paper
Collection of the Artist
00
Carol Prusa
Hyperstrings
2011
Silverpoint, graphite, titanium white and mars black pigment
with acrylic binder on acrylic hemisphere with video
Courtesy of the Jenkins Johnson Gallery, NYC
,000
Larry Ross,
Mechanized Mumbo Jumbo
2011
Pen and ink with Dr. Martin's dyes on paper
Collection of the Artist
$ 1000
Kiyoko Sakai
Curved Light
2000
Acrylic and oil on canvas
Collection of the Artist
00
Assunta Sera
Edge On
2010
Oil stick on canvas
Collection of the Artist
00
Linda Stillman
Daily Paintings, May 2006
Daily Paintings, June 2006
Daily Paintings, July 2006
2006/2007
Acrylic and gouache on paper on panels
Collection of the Artist
00 for each painting
Will Suarez
All Praise Due
2010
Oil on Canvas
Collection of the Artist
00
Toni Thomas
From the Tipi Maker’s Hands
2009
Acrylic and dyed fabric on stitched canvas
45 x 90”
Collection of the Artist
Value: ,000.00
Lisa G. Westheimer
Cosmic Collision
2009
Stoneware
3” H x 17” W x1 7” D
Collection of the Artist
0
Lisa G. Westheimer
Meteor
2009
Stoneware
Collection of Jayne and Dennis Petrocelli
NFS
