Art and Science...

8:24 p.m.

19/02/19 - A cabinet of curiosities in a barely lighted room catches our eyes. When we come closer, hundreds of specimens, carefully displayed, exhibit their biological diversity. It's precisely the "Gabinete Biológico" which Pablo La Padula (Argentina, 1966) is presenting at MUNTREF, Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, to explain to us, according to the artist, "the controversy between biological species and it's questionable pertinence."

Gabinete Biologico, by Pablo La Padula

Muntref, Centro de Arte y Naturaleza

La Padula's artwork is linked to science because he is himself a biologist turned artist. The encyclopedic disposition of natural specimens in a glass cabinet was popular in the 18th Century. Today it seems outdated. La Paluda rescues it and we, unused to them, feel certain visual confusion.

Gabinete Biologico, by Pablo La Padula

Muntref, Centro de Arte y Naturaleza

The installation is part of the exhibition entitled “Zoología Fantástica” and it is completed with two other artworks: "Traslúcido victoriano" and the video "Generación celular".

Traslúcido victoriano, by Pablo La Padula (2018)

Installation on wooden shelves with glass drawings and shadows.

Although presented separately, the three artworks are related as a group. If “Traslúcido victoriano” takes us to Darwin's approach of the species, the video brings us back to the present through cellular mitosis, as seen through an electronic microscope. The transparency of the materiales that are part of “Traslúcido” vary according to their location and the quality of the light coming from the window. The narrative relates animals with humans through a shared DNA.

In “Generación celular” we are marvelled as we see a a cell turn into a tadpole. The screen, divided into several zones, shows us how small atomic units group themselves to become an adult specimen. And thus we face the experiments that lead scientific curiosity in the quest to apprehend nature.

Generación celular, de Pablo La Padula (2018)

Video, microscopic movies of cellular generations and chromosomal duplications.

The entire exhibition seems like an excuse for the artist to introduce us to his very own and personal science museum, but in that selfish act we are wondered by Nature and life itself.