SuperCellular

On view January 30 - March 31, 2023

video courtesy of Rowan Productions

SuperCellular is a new site-specific immersive art gallery experience that combines sculpture, light, sound and moving imagery as a reflection of the astonishing and almost incomprehensible density and activity of the chemical molecules in our bodies. Inspired by neuroscience, cellular biology, and genetics, the installation contemplates the complexities and intricacies of living processes and the mysteries of cellular interactions.

Found objects are Healy's primary source of material in creating her sculptural forms. Some have accumulated over time in Healy’s studio, with some added for this project from junkyards, recycling centers, the “street,” and various industrial sources. Some are complete and unaltered objects, not so much prefabricated and standing alone, as “combined,” with the hope that disparate things produce new meanings by juxtaposition. Other times, more generic or neutral raw materials are “assembled” into sculptural forms. The use of recycled industrial debris, although central to Carolyn’s practice since the beginning, seems rather like how living cells constantly make and remake their parts. The confluence of method and subject is welcome serendipity.

Phillips’ videos are projections on the sculptural forms that bring the installation to life by animating the objects. Imagery used includes a slowly undulating web of filaments reminiscent of neuron cells, while other visuals can be seen as membranes and molecules interacting in transparent globes. Overall, these projections are inspired by the immense number of complex actions performed by the trillions of molecules that make up living organisms. The associated soundscapes are composed from over 450 digital sound files, both acoustic and electronically produced, which create an active, buzzing aural environment.

The overlapping projections and three-dimensional sculptures represent a variety of micro cellular elements such as chromosomes, electrical synapsis and threads of the nervous system, white blood cells and hemoglobin, and dividing cells from simple to complex. The objects, video, sound, and sculpture are abstracted organic imagery meant to be metaphorical, not scientific, and are a reflection of the marvel and intricacies of living processes.

SuperCellular from John JH Phillips on Vimeo.

Artists' Statement

"Like many others during the height of Covid, we became fascinated by the workings of the human body and to fill the time the artists began watching lectures and reading—beginning with a series on neuroscience that had been sitting on our shelf unwatched for years, and moving on, by way of evolution, cellular biology, and genetics, to the question of how life happened and the complex systems needed to keep it going. We were astonished by the almost incomprehensible density and activity of the chemical molecules in our bodies—which allow us to make art about the almost incomprehensible density and activity of the chemical molecules in our bodies… Well, let’s just say we entered a recursive wonderland of the known and unknown.

We Sapiens have used art for millennia to express the ineffable, to try to understand what makes us, us. We hope visitors to this exhibit, in bringing their own imagination and knowledge to the experience of the artwork, will find new opportunities to think about the microscopic mysteries of life."

Resources and Inspiration

Books
Harold Blum, Time’s Arrow and Evolution, 1951
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, 2004
Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, 1999
Robert Kelly, The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us about Our Future, 2016
Joseph LeDoux, Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are, 2003
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History, 2017 and The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, 2022
Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, 2017
Larry Swanson, The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal, 2017
E.O. Wilson, Diversity of Life, 2001
Carl Zimmer, Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, 2021

Video Lectures
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery at Stanford University
Dr. Stephen Nowicki, Professor of Biology and Neurobiology at Duke University

Artists' Biography

Carolyn Healy is an installation artist who began her career exhibiting small, abstract assemblages at the Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, in 1979. Since creating a stage set for a performance of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses, in1987, she has concentrated on large site-specific installations, many in collaboration with sound and video artist John Phillips. Some of these have been settings for performance events and many have been created for dilapidated industrial or historic buildings. Materials found on location have been incorporated whenever possible, along with other recycled or common objects. The projects have been seen nationally and internationally in museums, university galleries and theaters, as well as numerous alternative sites. Carolyn has received five individual Artist Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Art from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, an NEA New Forms Regional Grant, as well as numerous project support grants from the Leeway Foundation, the Dietrich Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

John JH Phillips is a sound and video artist. His work has included interactive sound installations and audio-visual performances in museums, art galleries, and non-traditional spaces in this country and abroad. Since 1987 he has collaborated extensively with sculptor Carolyn Healy on site-based installations. His musical compositions have been presented at dance and theater venues, on the nationally syndicated radio program New American Radio, and at national and international electronic art festivals such as ISEA and ICMA. His live sound and video performances have been seen in numerous venues in Philadelphia and also in New York City; his composing has been supported by American Composers Forum (collaboration with Pauline Oliveros) and the Millay Colony (composer in residence). To pursue his video work, he has enjoyed residencies at the Experimental Television Center and at Signal Culture, both in Owego, New York. Grants include a fellowship in Sound Art from the National Endowment for the Arts, and several in Media Arts from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Highlights of the artists’ collaborative projects include: a performance/ installation on a river barge with tugboat for Whitman at 200, Philadelphia; an entire cellblock in historic Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia; stage set and sound for performances at LaMaMa and Symphony Space, NYC and the Cini Foundation, Venice, Italy. Installations incorporating artifacts found on site include historic Disston Saw Works and Globe Dye Works, both in Philadelphia, and Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville, New Jersey. The artists have created four installations for the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festivals: in a storefront, warehouse, loft and elevator shaft, as well as commissioned works for the International Computer Music Conferences in Ann Arbor, Michigan and in Beijing, China, and at Suyama Space, Seattle; Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

terragizmo.net

Additional Programming

Selections from the 2019-2022 Biomedical Art and Visualization Program, a concurrent exhibition in our Flux Space.

Rowan University has one of the few undergraduate programs in Biomedical Art and Visualization available in the country. Students combine artistic talent and strong visual communication skills with natural science and biomedical intellect to create work at the intersection of art, science and medicine. The work on display represents 3D visualization of biological processes. Inspired by the same science as the artists who created SuperCellular, this work intends to convey a scientific view of the content whereas the gallery installation explores an emotional reaction to the sheer complexities of life.