- Visual Analogies and Inquiries: The Work of Michiko Itatani and Birgitta Weimer
- TINY: Art from Microscopes at UW-Madison
January 21 – March 5, 2011
Panel Discussion and Preview Night, Thursday, January 20, 6 p.m.
Opening Reception, Friday, January 21 (Gallery Night), 5 – 9 p.m.
Striking new three-dimensional forms, nontraditional installations and microscopic photographs and models by renowned artists and scientists provide a powerful experience January 21 – March 5 in a dual exhibition of visual art informed by aspects of scientific theory.
“Visual Analogies and Inquiries: The Work of Michiko Itatani and Birgitta Weimer” and “TINY: Art from Microscopes at UW-Madison” explore the boundaries of art and science, and the visual and creative nature of scientific endeavor.
“Birgitta Weimer and Michiko Itatani are very accomplished artists, and innovators in the genre of visual art informed by science who have exhibited widely in the United States and internationally,” said Mark Lawson, Director of Galleries.
Weimer resides in Königswinter, Germany, and has studied Anthropology and Ethnography in addition to Fine Arts.
Drawing inspiration from scientific-rationalistic models of the world, she will exhibit four wall installations executed in a variety of media – including plastic, rubber, steel, acrylic glass and vinyl. She compares her three-dimensional wall piece “Morphogenesis” to neurons, blood vessels or electronic impulses and describes her artistic process as similar to an operation.
“Sculpture is descended from the Latin verb for cutting, and this is what I do … with extreme precision,” Weimer said.
Itatani, from Chicago, is influenced by the pursuit of truth and said her work reflects the human desire to understand 21st century complexities. Her work is striking for its juxtaposition of traditional oil on canvas with nontraditional installation formats.
Weimer and Itatani will take part in a Panel Discussion at 6 p.m. on a special preview night, Thursday, January 20, with TINY curatorial committee member Stephen Paddock, before the exhibition’s opening reception on Gallery Night, Friday, January 21, from 5 – 9 p.m.
Paddock, an Honorary Associate Fellow and Associate Scientist in Molecular Biology at UW-Madison, co-curated “TINY” in association with artists, scientists, academics and educators. Most of the images were collected by researchers using a microscope or X-ray crystallography.
The photographs reveal a world impossible to see with the naked eye, and continue the centuries’ long reliance of practitioners in the seemingly disparate fields of art and science on each others’ skills to advance their own fields.
“It’s literally art like you’ve never seen it,” Lawson said.
Many MIAD alumni work in areas that merge art with science. Mark Holzer (Illustration and Painting ‘07) designs interactive materials for science education at Milwaukee’s Center for BioMolecular Modeling, while Erica Lyn Huppe ’06 is a Scientific Illustrator at the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Industrial Design major Ryan Ramos ’07 is Lead Industrial Designer at GE Healthcare.
Two additional exhibitions will run concurrently with the dual show, the sixth in MIAD’s Culture in Tradition series.
“De$ign: Great Design is Great Business” invites visitors to experience how Trek uses the power of great bicycle design to drive business in a global marketplace, in the Brooks Stevens Gallery January 21 – March 12.
Work by MIAD Interior Architecture and Design students from the Urban Ecology Design Project slated to open in the Menomonee Valley in 2012 will be on view in the River Level Gallery.
Artist statement Michiko Itatani, www.michikoitatani.com
Artist statement Birgitta Weimer, www.birgitta-weimer.com.
