"Merger"
A collaborative project by Faina

Lerman and Graem Whyte
Alumni & Faculty Hall

Center Galleries - College for Creative Studies
301 Frederick Douglass, Detroit, MI 48202

http://www.ccscad.edu/calendar.cfm?
313-664-7800

Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00am – 5:00pm
January 22 – March 5, 2005


CCS’ hallway gallery for Alumni and Faculty exhibitions plays host to a unique two-person exhibition this time out. Faina Lerman and Graem Whyte present what at first appear to be simply complementary works, but in fact (as the title of the exhibition states) actually represent a merger of both their methods of working and subject matter.





Lerman’s two-dimensional solo work consists of ink color drawings of amorphous, organic forms. Her squiggled marks that burst forth across her surfaces demonstrate a delight for pure visual expression as well as issues of abstract composition. From out of this raw bustling soup of bright pinks and subtle greens, yellows, and blues, a life of sorts begins to emerge. The colors are of flesh, foliage, and the earth. These might be time lapse and color enhanced images taken of Petri dishes flourishing before our eyes. There is a joy in the organic quality of the work, both in the forms themselves and how we might imagine the artist was at work.


Whereas Lerman’s primary focus seems to be on the organic, Whyte’s stems from the mathematical. He achieves this through a variety of sculptural mediums including the simplest of materials – in “Dangle” he’s taken paper and through intricate folding and cutting, sculpted a chain of geometric forms. This speaks to the shape of space: yes the work is flat, but by putting a crimp in it (or two, or several hundred as the case may be) it’s become something very different, a model of our terrain. He does a similar thing with cast metal, in which one side is marked off by a grid of triangular shapes and a backside of finger-like elongated forms. The piece has a distinct front and back, but its linear shape has been bent into an undulating curve. The triangular grid might be the coordinate system for mapping out the earth’s surface with GPS devices, while the backside fingers are radiating cones of energy.


Using magnets and steel wool, Whyte’s made art from the magnetic field diagrams from physics class. In one piece he allows two spheres of magnetized steel to interact side by side, while in another an entire surface within a picture frame has been magnetized and coated with a fur-like mass of steel wool. The visual results are perhaps less striking than his other works, but the concept and the sense of play (try blowing on the steel wool to interact with the piece!) more than make up for that.





Another piece consists of adjoined hollowed out half-egg forms of varying sizes. These are all directed right at the viewer, allowing one to see either into the inside of the ovular shape or the outer surface. They are strung together to create an entire form of two double rings that in some ways resembles each of the smaller pieces. It’s an elegant form, a first glance offers a simplicity that leads to the discovery of the deeper complexity upon further inspection.


While Whyte’s pieces all seem strictly scientific and mathematical (though always visually interesting), they do connect very closely to the world of the organic. Mathematics has long been held to be the language of nature. Yet throughout history, people have been trying to force our geometry onto the world. That changed with the development of fractal geometry in the twentieth century, as this new mathematics finally made it possible to describe nature in all its complexity. Benoit B. Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry refuted earlier attempts at describing nature through mathematics, “Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones. Coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in straight lines.”





And so we come to the merger between the work of Lerman and Whyte. Fractals possess what is technically referred to as “self-similarity” an attribute of our organic landscape as well. To understand this, think of a coastline, and within that the coastlines within coastlines. Or perhaps a mountain range, or a tree, whose branches resemble the whole, all the way down to the branching structure within the leaves. We see this too in ourselves from circulatory to nervous systems, or the tree-like structures that are our lungs that make the tremendous absorption of oxygen possible. Such mathematical forms characterize organic growth and our world is alive with that.


Lerman’s sculpture “Ciliascape” is at once a three-dimensional projection of her two-dimensional works, full of colorful and playful organic forms. It is also a reference to “cilia” a term which both means the hair-like filaments of cells that allow for their propulsion and similarly shaped rooted structures that act as filters within our respiratory system. In any case, she has created something quite organic that looks more than a little bit like Whyte’s more obviously mathematical forms. At that point there is a great dynamical interplay between the two, allowing Whyte’s work to be re-viewed as speaking to the organic of Lerman’s and vice versa. Was perhaps his triangular grid a microscopic look at the surface of our skin? Was the self-similar egg creation (and let’s not get started on which came first, the egg or the…) a view of our cells, or perhaps even the arrangement of stars in the galaxy? (For the universe as a whole too, is characterized by this self-similarity.) In this light then, maybe Lerman’s drawings don’t come from artful whimsy but readings of molecular biology texts?


In the end it may not matter. Lerman and Whyte have created a compelling body of work that both inform one another. Each speaks to the process of creation in our world and in art. And like our organic/mathematical world itself, there is more to see the deeper we decide to look. – Nick Sousanis


Also, in the Main Gallery:

American Glass: The Murano Influence
January 22 – March 5, 2005

Curated by CCS Crafts faculty member Herb Babcock, this exhibition focuses on American Studio Glass artists whose work reflects an influence by and reference to Italian Murano design and technique. This exhibition will coincide with the Detroit Institute of Arts’ 20th Century Venetian glass exhibition.

(Look for words on this exhibition in a future column!)