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19th-century plaster
medical heads
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Surreal Science: Loudon Collection with SalvatoreArancio is at Whitechapel Gallery until 6 January
2019
From the Whitechapel website:
On encountering an exquisitely rendered glass jellyfish and other invertebrates by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in the Natural History Museum at Harvard University in 1998, Dutch art collector George Loudon began an extraordinary collection of scientific objects. These 19th century teaching models and illustrations were created for handling and contemplation in the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world.
The collection now contains over 200 objects, crafted from unexpected materials including lost-wax casts, minerals, velvet, ivory and glass and extends to strikingly-illustrated books, prints, drawings and anatomical specimens from taxidermied animals to bisected human skulls and papier-mâché flowers.
Whitechapel Gallery invite Salvatore Arancio to select from and respond to the collection in an exhibition that stages the objects in dialogue with the artist’s own works. Arancio is renowned for his fantastical prints and ceramics that erupt in vividly chromatic biomorphic forms. He has devised a surreal scenography filled with sound, light and his own ceramic sculptures. They are juxtaposed with scientific objects to create startling hybrids and poetic narratives including a 19th century treatise on the shape and colour of human souls.
Review.
Laura Cumming (Observer)
From the Whitechapel website:
On encountering an exquisitely rendered glass jellyfish and other invertebrates by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in the Natural History Museum at Harvard University in 1998, Dutch art collector George Loudon began an extraordinary collection of scientific objects. These 19th century teaching models and illustrations were created for handling and contemplation in the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world.
The collection now contains over 200 objects, crafted from unexpected materials including lost-wax casts, minerals, velvet, ivory and glass and extends to strikingly-illustrated books, prints, drawings and anatomical specimens from taxidermied animals to bisected human skulls and papier-mâché flowers.
Whitechapel Gallery invite Salvatore Arancio to select from and respond to the collection in an exhibition that stages the objects in dialogue with the artist’s own works. Arancio is renowned for his fantastical prints and ceramics that erupt in vividly chromatic biomorphic forms. He has devised a surreal scenography filled with sound, light and his own ceramic sculptures. They are juxtaposed with scientific objects to create startling hybrids and poetic narratives including a 19th century treatise on the shape and colour of human souls.
Review.
Laura Cumming (Observer)
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Leopold
and Rudolf Blaschka, glass model of a Portuguese man o’war, Mid to late 19th
century
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Polychrome wax models of
the development of Branchiostama
lanceolatum, a small marine inverterbrate, after Berthold Hatschek,
made by Adolf Ziegler.
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Francesco Garnier
Valletti, Box of wax fruits (peaches), 19th Century
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Late 19th-century models
of mushrooms.
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Papier-mâché botanical
models made by French artists, 1866-1927
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Plaster anatomical
demonstration model torso, 19th Century
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Ceramic by Salvatore Arancio
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