Arte e Ciência – Nós entre os Extremos

Featuring 35 works, the exhibition Arte e Ciência – Nós entre os Extremos [Art and Science – Us between the Extremities], proposes to reconsider art with the eyes of science and to expand the visitor’s relationship with science through art, by connecting him to abstract fields of thing we know but can’t capture we our senses, either for their incalculable greatness or for their minute dimension.

For curator Paulo Miyada, “our ability of thinking is widest and more precise than our senses, and what arts and other human activities make is to increase our sensory field, make it possible to be with scales, dimensions and complexities that objective knowledge can’t convey”.

One of the most emblematic pieces in the show is the film “Powers of Ten”, from 1977, by Charles and Ray Eames (1907, St. Louis – 1978, idem, and 1912, Sacramento – 1988, Los Angeles), that has helped several generations to expand their imaginary about the human place amongst the most different orders of magnitude, from the largest to the tinier.

With poetical experiments with the changes that can happen by cutting, isolating or augmenting the parts of a whole, Marcius Galan (b. 1972, Indianapolis, USA), Milton Machado (b. 1947, Rio de Janeiro) and Marcelo Moscheta (b. 1976, São José do Rio Preto) participate in the section “Divide, Modulate, Amplify: Understand?”, that departs from the idea that both art and science teach us that moving to smaller scales can create detours in perception, vertigo or qualitative changes.

In the section “Encounter with the Infinite”, the investigation is based in the notion that the infinite can’t be ceased; it’s useful to math, therefore, to deal with situations that tend towards it, instead of trying to calculate it directly. In this core, works by Amélia Toledo (b. 1926, São Paulo), Daniel de Paula (b. 1987, Boston) and On Kawara (1933, Kariya – 2014, New York) deal with the possibilities and impossibilities of attempting to hold the infinite.

In “Stored Complexities”, the curator suggests a wonder as to how we can glimpse, in the interior of the simplest of objects and the most homogeneous of elements, after increasing them many times, their complex structures and patterns, sometimes chaotic and loud. These section includes works by Pontogor (b. 1981, Rio de Janeiro), Artur Lescher (b. 1962, São Paulo), and Franz Weissmann (1911, Knittelfeld, Austria – 2005, Rio de Janeiro).

The contribution of science to an expanded notion of landscape, that includes a world that goes beyond the immediate human experience, is present in “The Images of the World”, with works by Tiago Tebet (b. 1986, São Paulo), Tomie Ohtake (1913, Kyoto – 2015, São Paulo), Elen Gruber (b. 1984, Caxias) and Leticia Ramos (b. 1976, Santo Antônio da Patrulha).

Finally, the section “Relative Velocities and Paradoxes of Perception” explores how many times the intuitive perception of reality happens in the opposite way of its course in space-time. Here, the visitor can find works by Marina Camargo (b. 1980, Maceió), and Gisela Motta & Leandro Lima (b. 1976, São Paulo), including a new piece by the duo commissioned for the show.

Video interviews with specialist in molecular synthesis Fernando Reinach, astronomical physicist Jorge Vieira complete the exhibition.