Bio Curious
It’s alive! A new art exhibition redefines weird science.
posted October 16, 2007 2:14PM
Philip Ross is blowing the myth of the bonsai-as-tranquil-botanical-entity wide open: “It doesn’t sound nice, but you almost kill the plant in order to keep it in this weird test state,” he says. “You’re taking it to death’s door, and that’s part of the aesthetic of it.” The inherent drama of the Japanese-garden fixture is at the heart of the artist’s own hydroponic-plant-installation series, a six-years-in-the-making project whose latest incarnation, Junior Return, involves a network of 18 microprocessor-operated plants that the artist has arranged to appear as “a swarm of glowing space-ships.” The piece will be featured in “BioTechnique,” a new, education-focused art exhibition curated by Ross for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. “Biotech is part of [our] culture, but there’s no visualization of it,” he explains, noting that Northern California is home to more life-sciences companies than any other region in the world. “I wanted to make a visual way of thinking about it.”
The show’s contributions will span the entire spectrum of bio-art innovators: Artist Denise King will install window-sized habitats filled with salt-pond water (which, thanks to varying levels of salinity, will take on a “stained glass” effect), while SF’s Aqua Forest Aquarium will grow a special custom tank for the occasion. Positioned to be the most controversial exhibitor, Australia’s Tissue Culture & Art Project will mount NoArk—a modern take on a Wunderkammer that draws to attention to the dissolution of traditional categories of living organisms. The piece features a mass of cells growing in a biotech incubator alongside examples of experimental subjects (a mouse, for instance).
All told, the results are equal parts science fair and avant-garde art happening. But Ross is quick to point out that the aesthetic reality of the displays is not always as one might expect. “When you hear ‘They’re growing cells,’ you imagine there’s robots and lasers and scientists in some Doc Ock kind of outfit ‘making biotech,’ but [the scientific sample] is hard to fetishize,” he says. “If you passed the real thing on the street, you might be a little disgusted. But then you build a really beautiful frame around it, and suddenly you’re looking at life in a very different way.” Which, it seems, is exactly the point.
“BioTechnique” is on view through Jan. 6, 2008 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
The show’s contributions will span the entire spectrum of bio-art innovators: Artist Denise King will install window-sized habitats filled with salt-pond water (which, thanks to varying levels of salinity, will take on a “stained glass” effect), while SF’s Aqua Forest Aquarium will grow a special custom tank for the occasion. Positioned to be the most controversial exhibitor, Australia’s Tissue Culture & Art Project will mount NoArk—a modern take on a Wunderkammer that draws to attention to the dissolution of traditional categories of living organisms. The piece features a mass of cells growing in a biotech incubator alongside examples of experimental subjects (a mouse, for instance).
All told, the results are equal parts science fair and avant-garde art happening. But Ross is quick to point out that the aesthetic reality of the displays is not always as one might expect. “When you hear ‘They’re growing cells,’ you imagine there’s robots and lasers and scientists in some Doc Ock kind of outfit ‘making biotech,’ but [the scientific sample] is hard to fetishize,” he says. “If you passed the real thing on the street, you might be a little disgusted. But then you build a really beautiful frame around it, and suddenly you’re looking at life in a very different way.” Which, it seems, is exactly the point.
“BioTechnique” is on view through Jan. 6, 2008 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
