The photographic exhibition "Quand la science rejoint l'art" which just opened at the Eslite bookstore on Dunhua South Road is an odd show, exhibiting as it does large format prints of microscopic organisms taken through the powerful lens of an electronic microscope. It is not art as normally conceived, but some of the images are extremely beautiful, and given that many represent the various substances on which life is based, it is also thought-provoking.
The photographs span various genre, from abstract expressionism, pop art, pure abstraction, and, with the inclusion of video monitors showing film of micro organisms in action, multimedia.
A photograph of a five-day old chicken embryo, titled Spider's Web, looks like a bloodshot eyeball, with veins spreading out from a dark center over a white yoke. Harmony, a picture of the 3D structure of an HLA molecule cannot but amaze, looking as it does like some sort of electronic scrawl, possibly created out of neon. While the explanations accompanying the pictures are strictly scientific both in content and in tone, this does no prevent the non-scientific imagination taking off on wondrous flights of fancy. A photo of the "structural detail of a human kidney" is titled Gorgon, which might send the mind in a particular direction, but on the whole these concessions to the imaginative restrict rather than expand the horizons that these pictures open up.
The exhibition, which has toured extensively around the world, is brought to Taiwan by the French research organization called Inserm, which created the images as part of its clinical work. According to Christian Brechot, the director general of Inserm, "research must stay an art from which the researcher can carry us often in an unexpected way to pure and new directions," an aim this current exhibition certainly manages to achieve.
The layout of the show is unashamedly that of an exhibition of art works, and this allows visitors the chance to step back and enjoy the images without the encumbrance of the often obscure explanations. While at "Quand la science rejoint l'art," science takes a backseat to art, it is a great way of introducing oneself and others to the amazing world that lies beyond what is normally visible to us.
"Quand la science rejoint l'art" will show at the B2 level of Eslite bookstore, 245 Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei (
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