Lutetia (Prototype) (2015). 20 x 20cm. Graphite on
paper. Image courtesy of the artist.
The book I am a Strange Loop by Douglas
Hofstadter led him to the concept of autopoesis—Greek for ‘self-creation’, which found its
way into his work without his even realizing it.
In 2010, he showed a series entitled “Autopoesis” in Camden, London. The subjects in these
drawings—brains, neurons, strips of muscle, and
intestine—are hypnotic, feeding infinitely into
each other. In a caption on his website, he says,
“It’s tempting to consider the human organism
as a complete sum of many merging systems. It
might provide the exemplary sole self-sufficient
unit were it not problematised by our complex
relationships and myriad dependencies.”
The anatomical paintings he made during his
stint at Barts, inspired by the huge collections
of specimens at the museum, reflected his continued interest in this theme. In Oedipus (2012),
a foot mirrors into itself, and in Fides 2 (2012), a
hand—or is it a pair of hands? Or four?—grasps
its own fingers. These paintings were later
displayed in the show “me . complete . you” in
London in August 2013.
Hanuman (2013). 30 x 40cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
From 2013–2014 he held a Leverhulme Trust–
funded residency at the Royal Veterinary College in London, where working with animal
specimens provided him with an education in
comparative anatomy and allowed him to explore relationships “between humans and animals and human-as-animal.” Explaining further,
he said his interest lay in “[how] the varying
role of animals as food, transport or companion
shapes our interaction and the extent to which
we identify with them.”
His most recent work uses images of comets and asteroids taken during the European
Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission, which sent a
probe to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The prototype for Lutetia (2015) shows
that his interest in depicting islands is still very
much intact, but it seems that his focus has
shifted. Explaining his choice to go down this
new path, he said, “It might seem like a new visual direction, but it’s really a continuation. It’s
still all about the body, in this case, my sevenmonth-old son, whose arrival in our life, like a
comet colliding with earth—shaking things up,
but in a good way.”
Geoffrey Harrison is a member of SciArt Center, an organization dedicated to bringing scientists and artists together for a common cause. To learn more about SciArt Center and their membership, visit www.sciartcenter.org.
SciArt in America June 2015
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