Kevin Van Aelst
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
This work reminds me of the Isabella Krieg show I saw last week, check out her work too.
“Subjects of my color photographs include every day foods and objects: bread, doughnuts, crackers, candy, floor tile, sweaters, and lint. These simple materials are arranged into shapes and patterns inspired by formulas found in science and mathematics, such as fractal geometry, chaos theory, biology and chemistry. The palette is informed by the colors of these mundane objects, so that colorful frosting finds its shape as the organelles of a dividing cell, or that bright gummy worms become the chromosomes on a chart of the human genome.
This work calls upon historical tenants of conceptualism and minimalism. Conceptual art has shown that the ideas behind a specific artwork can be more important than the aesthetics or visual appeal of the piece itself. The serial process, showing each successive permutation of a fractal pattern, refers to minimalism. Equally important to this body of work is humor—via odd juxtapositions of sophisticated content with banal subject matter.
This Body of work is about creating order where randomness is expected, defying natural probabilities, so that lint stuck to a sweater forms an accurate star chart of the summer sky over New England, and milk spills from its carton into a logarithmic spiral. I use common everyday objects and foods to illustrate timeless and lofty ideas. While the subjects of the photos are artifacts of modern culture, the content of the photos, such as the Golden Mean, are often ancient and revered notions. This work involves finding materials that bear a certain semblance to common scientific illustrations and visual displaysÑa common snack cracker having the shape of the fundamental unit of a three dimensional fractal, and an Oreo cookie having the same shape and colors as a yin yang.”
*Thanks to The Exposure Project for this one.