Art meets science

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Artwork by Alphonso Arul Doss

Art has always relied on scientific inspiration. From Rembrandt’s flawless use of light in ‘Night Watch’ to Da Vinci’s subtle cryptography in his paintings, scientific exploration through art has only changed with the times.

Paresh Maity points out that any art is closely related with science. “If you don’t know anything about velocity and motion, you can’t express properly. In my sculpture ‘Procession’, I had dismantled a hundred Royal Enfield motorcycles, to denote ants in a procession. Their body is made of the fuel tanks and the headlight of the motorcycle is the head. The light is always functioning, sometimes powerful, and sometimes dim,” he explains. The study of light continues to inspire many artists. Alphonso Arul Doss has incorporated the dynamics of light observed through a gemstone. “When I visited the Smithsonian Institution, I studied the focus of light on the large gemstones and thought, why not apply this?” he reveals. Parvathy Nayar says, “By mixing science and art, I try to make viewers relook the world they thought they knew well. I do this mixing together and layering, using cutting-edge scientific images of particle colliders, NASA space images and pictures of the body taken by electron microscopes,” she relates. M Praveen Goud’s passion for science, mathematics and technology permeates into his work. “For the series on Electro-Sapiens, I combined images from fashion magazines with my portraits created with various electronic components,” explains the artist. Mukesh Sharma says of his ‘The Keyboard of Small Things’, “The series is based on the Infinite Monkey Theorem which states that a monkey hitting keys at random for an infinite amount of time will type a given text, such as the works of Shakespeare. The metaphoric arrangement of concentric keyboards invites us to the cosmic invasion of technology,” reveals Mukesh.
Galleryist and artist Shalini Biswajit of the Forum Art Gallery says that these are exciting times for contemporary art. “Every day, new discoveries are made and it is only natural that more artists are veering towards it,” she sums up.