Sachin Tekade likes to make things out of lots and lots of paper flowers.

Curved Crease Sculptures by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine

About the work:

Guided by Invoices* is pleased to present an exhibition of origami sculptures by father-and-son collaborative Martin and Erik Demaine, curated by Chris Byrne. Erik and Martin Demaine combine the art of origami with the science of geometric folding algorithms to create the aesthetic of their sculptures. In 1998, they began to investigate the folding of complex forms using curved patterns that induce paper to self-fold, which culminated in a series of three works titled Computational Origami…The selection of works on view demonstrates the extension of the Demaines’ investigations of materiality and production in the Computational Origami series. Here, hand-pleated concentric circles rest in equilibrium, twisted into elegant forms enabled by the very physics of the paper itself…The folded surfaces undulate to represent a form in hyperbolic space, guided by the properties of the paper and those of the underlying mathematical algorithms. To the Demaines, mathematics is an art form, and the ongoing dialogue between art and science is fundamental to their process.

“More and more, we find that our mathematical research and artistic projects converge, with the artistic side inspiring the mathematical side and vice versa. Mathematics itself is an art form, and through other media such as sculpture, puzzles, and magic, the beauty of mathematics can be brought to a wider audience. These artistic endeavors also provide us with deeper insights into the underlying mathematics, by providing physical realizations of objects under consideration, by pointing to interesting special cases and directions to explore, and by suggesting new problems to solve.”

*If Guided By Invoices sounds oddly familiar, it might be because the gallery is owned by Anne Brigitte Sirois, a member of the indie band Guided By Voices.

Cells, diatoms and neurons are just a few of the things that inspire Betty Busby’s quilts.

Jim’s skulls

Colors of Shadows by Hiroshi Sugimoto is a 10 year long project inspired by the scientific experiments developed by Newton and Goethe on the origins of color, East Asian Buddhist doctrines and our psychological response to color. 

About the project:

The establishment of cognitively verifiable natural science brought the world closer to the modern age, a world that could be analysed and quantified. A century after the publication of Opticks, however, criticism of Newton’s mathematical approach was heard from an unexpected quarter: in 1810, poet, novelist and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe compiled a twenty-year study on the effects of colour on the human eye, and in his Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours) found Newton’s impersonal scientific exposition wanting on artistic grounds. Granted Newton’s spectrum of seven defractively differentiated colours was perceived by the human eye via the central cortex, but what did that prove? Colours, he argued, appealed directly to our senses; red and blue had effects upon the human psyche that would not submit to mechanistic quantification. Furthermore, while we perceive light precisely because of darkness, light travelling through the blackness of outer space was imperceptible to the eye; only once light hit the atmosphere and reflected off airborne dust did we see a blue sky. Seeing the darkness tint ultramarine each dawn as I sighted the morning star, I really got a sense of what Goethe wrote in his preface: “Die Farben sind Taten des Lichts, Taten und Leiden.” (“Colours are acts of light, acts and sufferings.”) I interpret this to mean colour occurs when light strikes some obstruction, suffering the impact.

…Gazing at bright prismatic light each day, I too had my doubts about Newton’s seven-colour spectrum: yes, I could see his red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-purple schema, but I could just as easily discern many more different colours in-between, nameless hues of red-to-orange and yellow-to-green. Why must science always cut up the whole into little pieces when it identifies specific attributes? The world is filled with countless colours, so why did natural science insist on just seven? I seem to get a truer sense of the world from those disregarded intracolours. Does not art serve to retrieve what falls through the cracks now that scientific knowledge no longer needs a God? I decided to use virtually obsolete Polaroid film to photograph the spans between colours.

What began on Polaroid film has now been expanded to include large pieces of Hermès silk that will be available to be viewed starting June 12 here. 

Papercuts by Peter Callesen

Science is lovely in silk (at least it is in the hands of Karen Kamenetzky).

Kamenetzky on her work:

I dye, paint and stitch cottons and silks to create boldly colored wallhangings inspired by microscopic/cellular imagery - a kind of visual invented biology with textiles. I find this imagery metaphorically rich since all change fundamentally happens on this infinitesimal level.

Cara Barer’s book art makes me want to throw my next phonebook into the bathtub instead of the recycling bin. Water and other methods of transformation have saved many manuals and reference books from the trash and turned them into these lovely treasures.

Barer on her work:

My photographs are primarily a documentation of a physical evolution. I have changed a common object into sculpture in a state of flux. The way we choose to research and find information is also in an evolution. I hope to raise questions about these changes, the ephemeral and fragile nature in which we now obtain knowledge, and the future of books.

Transcending the Material by Ben Cuevas is a continuation of his interest in ”reflect[ing] on the condition of embodiment, which begs the question: what does it mean to have a body, to inhabit a body, to be a body incarnated in, and interacting with, this world?” In this particular installation housed in Wassaic, New York he uses cans of condensed milk as a reference to material culture and Wassaic’s local history (The Borden Company had a factory in Wassaic). It is also some of the most impressive knitting I’ve ever seen.

Peter Gentenaar’s makes beautiful paper sculptures that appear to float weightlessly like petals or leaves in an imaginary breeze. This resemblance to leaves begins with his process: 

Because I started out as a printmaker and sculptor, it took time to lose the idea that paper was a helpful carrier for prints or a filler for moulds. Gradually I found that the single sheet of paper, which had not dried yet, had all the possibilities I needed. A paper sheet is thin and strong and can be compared to the leaf on a tree or plant. Reinforced with very thin ribs of bamboo that look like the ribs of a leaf, the analogy between the sheet of paper and the plant form is emphasized even more. By beating my pulp very long, an extraordinary play of forces occurs during the drying processes of my paper sculpture. The paper will shrink considerably, up to 40%, and the forces associated with this, put the non shrinking bamboo framework under stress. The tension between the two materials transforms itself into a form reminiscent of a slowly curling autumn leaf.

These beautiful quilts by Kate Findlay aren’t patterned after tradition. Instead, these ultramodern quilts find their inspiration from the Large Hadron Collider. Learn more about Ms. Findlay and her quilts in this article from Symmetry magazine.