Creating art from birds, bugs, and bones

The exquisite craft of these works makes them very seductive visually and in a tactile sense. Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta start with dandelion puffs, removing each seed head from the flower, then gluing them around a tiny LED bulb. They arrange the battery-powered flowers on the wall in a pattern like a starry constellation called "Fragile Future 3" (2010), simulating the dispersal of seeds. Kate MccGuire's "Discharge" (2010) is equally appealing to the eye. Thousands of lowly pigeon feathers erupt from the floor into a giant waterspout like a silvery, cresting wave.

Many of the pieces are site-specific, like Xu Bing's "Background Story 6" (2010). From the front it looks like a Ming dynasty scroll painting of a mountain landscape. The back reveals that the images are created by vines, dead leaves, and roots taped to a frosted-glass light box. At the close of the show, the piece will be "unscrolled," its components returned to the garden.

"A lot of these artists embrace the ephemerality of nature," McFadden says. "It also speaks to their philosophical view of artmaking," according to Sims, who says they recycle materials rather than consider their art a commodity to be sold.

Much of the science-related work stems from fear. With science accomplishing feats like genetic engineering, cloning, in vitro fertilization, and organ transplants, doubts arise about the long-term effects of tampering with nature. "The idea of hybridity touches on real fears," McFadden says. Mutations caused by pollution are another worry: Shen Shaomin's hybrid creature, "Sagittarius" (2005), cast from bone meal, is a composite human-horse form – an experiment gone awry?

Artists also respond by rejecting pure logic and scientific objectivity. "The intellectual [approach] is no longer enough," Sims says, "particularly in this cyberworld we live in." Using materials such as insects and mice that spark a visceral shudder forces a viewer to experience a work on multiple levels. You can almost hear heads snap back as viewers recoil after reading the labels. Take, for example, Fabián Peña's delicate, sepia-toned mosaic made from cockroach fragments. First comes "ahh," then "ick!" then "hmmm."

As Ms. MccGuire says in an artist's statement, reframing materials like pigeon feathers that usually incite disgust entices viewers to re-examine prejudices. A visceral response to discomfiting material triggers ideas that resonate in the mind, she says, "somewhere beyond rational interpretation."

"The D.I.Y. phenomenon is not just a fad," McFadden notes, "but is indicative of a need in human beings' lives to have something they do, not just type on a keyboard." Artists want to reengage with the real, and what's more real (or powerful) than nature? Tracy Heneberger, whose "Moon" (2006) consists of anchovies covered with shellac in a tondo shape, describes his use of marine creatures in the catalog: "In a digital age defined by the virtual and inorganic, I choose elements with direct connections to the earth."

The attraction and repulsion related to nature and science stem from intrinsic awe and fear at the majesty and power of nature, which humanity sometimes harnesses and occasionally botches. Human beings – as part of nature – share both awe-full and awful qualities.

Despite man's overreaching and blunders, the artist's ability to re-purpose dead or debased material through the creative act brings it back to life. "It has a meaning and visual significance it didn't have before," McFadden points out.

The best example is a pair of works by Jochem Hendricks called "Hansi" and "Bubi" (2002-04), named after parakeets that, once deceased, were plucked of their blue and green feathers. The artist then sent their carbonized corpses to a lab to be pressurized into tiny synthetic diamonds. On two plinths, surrounded by a halo of feathers, these uncut diamonds glitter and gleam: art objects sprouted from organic compost.

IN PICTURES: Artists' work from the 'Dead or Alive' exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Previous

1 | 2