Atlas Phaenogamia or the Atlas of Mimetic Flowering Plants | installation view | image credit Anil Rane, courtesy Project 88, Mumbai

Each page of The Atlas of Mimetic Flowering Plants is both mirror and mimic, a mirror to its self and a mimic to diverse species including snake, butterfly, cicada, bee, spider, frog etc. The Atlas uses as its base selections from the series Herbarium and Plant Description, issued by the Biological Department of Southwest Kansas College in Winfield, Kansas. Dated April or May 1893, unknown collector, specimens on deposit at the R.L. McGregor Herbarium, reproduced here with permission. The R. L. McGregor Herbarium houses approximately 400,000 vascular plant specimens. The majority of these comprise exsiccatae, but the collection also includes seed, boxed, and fluid-preserved specimens. The collection is focused on the Central Grassland region of North America, with specimens from the Great Plains comprising approximately two-thirds of the collection.

Page 5 of the Atlas Phaenogamia or the Atlas of Mimetic Flowering Plants | installation view | image credit Anil Rane, courtesy Project 88, Mumbai

Page 1 of the Atlas Phaenogamia or the Atlas of Mimetic Flowering Plants | installation view | image credit Anil Rane, courtesy Project 88, Mumbai

Hopeful Monsters takes its title from the theory of macro-mutation or large mutations first proposed by German geneticist Richard Goldschmidt (1878 – 1958). Goldschmidt proposed that mutations occasionally yield individuals within populations that deviate radically from the norm and referred to such individuals as “hopeful monsters”. Under the right environmental circumstances, these may become fixed, and the population will found a new species.

Hopeful Monsters is a speculative journey into a sort of transitional morphology, plant, insect, animal. To borrow a phrase from the science fiction author Jeff Vandermeer, I am interested in exploring  what happens when the natural world around us becomes a kind of camouflage.

PROJECTS

Hopeful Monsters, video installation, 6 channel video work, looped, Framed 24 inch tv’s screen on pedestals.

Genetic Drift SYMBIONTS, series of three large prints, Colour pencil, pan pastel, acrylic paint, charcoal, dry pastel, 2018

Genetic Drift is a family of three Symbionts, which share a few similar antecedents but are also deliberately distinct in their primary genetic morphology.
The base of SYMBIONT II – Cavum Oris Plantae (mouth plant) seen at Project 88 as part of Hopeful Monsters, is a composite of a variety of flowering plants and pitcher plants. All the pieces were constructed with photographs sourced from public domain sites in addition to photographs I have taken on visits to Botanical Gardens etc., in addition to scans of drawings, etching etc.   The work includes drawings both on the prints and on the wall which suggests a kind of proliferation or contamination beyond the boundary of the work.

SYMBIONT 3 – Cavum Oris
Chlorophytum comosum (Spider plant)
Musella lasiocarpa (Chinese Yellow Banana)
Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads)
Crassulaceae (Stonecrop)
Tillandsia bulbosa (Bulbous airplant)
Trimeresurus macrolepis (large scale pitviper)
Ahaetulla prasina (Asian vine snake)
Opheodrys vernalis (smooth green snake)
Chrysopelea paradisi (Paradise tree snake)
Ledebouria socialis (silver squill / wood hyacinth)
Diadophis punctatus arnyi (Prairie Ringneck Snake)
Morelia viridis (green tree python)
Carcharodon carcharias (great white shark)
Gallus gallus domesticus embryo (Chicken embryo)
Nepenthes (tropical pitcher plant)
Sarracenia (trumpet pitcher plant)
Kigelia Africana (Sausage tree)
Agalychnis callidryas (red eyed tree frog)
Angelica gigas, (Korean angelica)
Dactylotum bicolor (Rainbow Grasshopper)
Nigella damascena (love-in-a-mist) (ragged lady) or (devil in the bush)
Saussurea obvallata (Brahma kamal)
Epiphyllum oxypetalum (Queen of the Night)
Pennatulacea (Sea Pens / soft coral)
Nelumbo nucifera (Lotus)
Human (heart, tendinous cords)
Scathophaga stercoraria (yellow dung fly)
Ophiuroid (Brittle star)

Hopeful Monsters takes its title from the theory of macro-mutation or large mutations first proposed by German geneticist Richard Goldschmidt (1878 – 1958). Goldschmidt proposed that mutations occasionally yield individuals within populations that deviate radically from the norm and referred to such individuals as “hopeful monsters”. Under the right environmental circumstances, these may become fixed, and the population will found a new species.

Hopeful Monsters is a speculative journey into a sort of transitional morphology, plant, insect, animal. To borrow a phrase from the science fiction author Jeff Vandermeer, I am interested in exploring  what happens when the natural world around us becomes a kind of camouflage.

Hopeful Monsters, Archival pigment print on fine art baryta paper, 60 x 70 inches, 2018.

Constructed of more than 140 digital forms, Hopeful Monsters explores taxonomy and morphology with a particular emphasis on mutation. Each cabinet houses a distinct biological order; taxonomic ranks used in the classification of organisms. These include Odonata(Dragonflies), Lepidoptera ( Butterflies), Hymenoptera (Bees), Diptera(Flies), and Coleoptera(Beetles). Each form is drawn with lines of video-feedback, structures made of individual, manually placed layers of video. And each form in turn, like an insect, in its chrysalis, reassembles its parts to make a new form.

Hopeful Monsters, video installation, 6 channel video work, looped, Framed 24 inch tv’s screen on pedestals.Image credit Anil Rane

The taxonomic orders selected, such as the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) show an amazing diversity of patterns, with most of the 18,000 species distinguishable on the basis of their wing pattern. Much of this diversity is thought to arise through novel switches in the genome that turn genes on in new contexts during wing development, thereby producing new patterns. They are therefore the perfect place to begin to understand morphology.

The specimens are constructed with still images sourced from the public domain (Insect images sourced from The Insects Unlocked project at the University of Texas at Austin and https://www.pexels.com/ free stock photos.) and layers of video-feedback. Similar to the old kaleidoscopes, video feedback is created when an ordinary hand-held camera is plugged into a TV and pointed at itself. The optical equivalent of acoustic feedback, a loop is created between the video camera and the television screen or monitor. With practice, it is possible to explore a vast arena of spontaneous pattern generation.

Video-feedback, which is quite extraordinary in its origins, when transformed into the familiar, the almost mundane, retains a quality of the uncanny. The result is a feeling of their being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar.
Referencing both early modern Wunderkammer and contemporary natural-history collections this space of ‘wonder’ will derive as much from the emotions it will elicit as from the strange, and hybrid species it will contain. Through form and media, Hopeful Monsters explores the interface between pattern and randomness which causes the system to evolve in a new direction; in other words to mutate.

Hopeful Monsters, video installation, 6 channel video work, looped, Framed 24 inch tv’s screen on pedestals.Image credit Anil Rane

Hopeful Monsters, video installation, 6 channel video work, looped, Framed 24 inch tv’s screen on pedestals.Image credit Anil Rane

“I don’t think we’re looking at a plant,” Whitby says, tentative, at one status meeting, risking his new relationship with the science division, which he has embraced as a kind of sanctuary.
“Then why are we seeing a plant, Whitby?” Cheney, managing to convey an all-consuming exasperation.

 “Why are we seeing a plant that looks like a plant being a plant. Doing plant things, like photosynthesis and drawing water up through its roots. Why? That’s not a tough question, is it, really? Or is it? Maybe it is a tough question, I don’t know, for reasons beyond me. But that’s going to be a problem, don’t you think? Having to reassert that things we think are the things they are actually are in fact the things they are and not some other thing entirely. Just think of all the fucking things we will have to reevaluate if you’re right, Whitby — starting with you!”

Cheney’s blistered, reddening expression bears down on Whitby as if he were the receptacle of every evil thing that has ever afflicted Cheney since the day he was born.

“Because,” Cheney says, lowering his voice, “if that’s a tough question, don’t we have to reclassify all the really tough questions?”

Later Whitby will regale you with information on how quantum mechanics impacts photosynthesis, which is all about “antenna receiving light and antenna can be hacked,” about how “one organism might peer out from another organism but not live there,” of how plants “talk” to one another, how communication can occur in chemical form and through processes so invisible to human beings that the sudden visibility of it would be “an irreparable shock to the system.”

Vandermeer Jeff, Acceptance: Southern Reach Trilogy

Genetic Drift is a term in evolutionary biology that is used to describe the variation in the relative frequency of different genotypes in a small population, owing to the chance disappearance of particular genes as individuals die or do not reproduce. British artist Paul Morrison has described his interest in “cognitive landscape. the terrain that one sees, somewhere behind the eyes’. This idea of a landscape that looks back, of a nature that is non-passive, in turn idyllic, uncanny, threatening, and seductive, is something I have been working with for some time now.
Genetic Drift is a family of three Symbionts, which share a few similar antecedents but are also deliberately distinct in their primary genetic morphology.

SYMBIONT I – Hymenoptera Magnoliophyta (wasp flower) is  made of bees, wasps, loctusts, grasshoppers, and butterfly cocoons. The base of SYMBIONT II– Cavum Oris Plantae (mouth plant)  is a composite of a variety of am flowering plants and pitcher plants while SYMBIONT III– Serpentes Parthenocissus (snake creeper) has several species of snake, frog and chameleon. The work includes drawings both on the prints and on the wall which hopefully suggests a kind of proliferation or contamination beyond the boundary of the work.

All the pieces were with photographs sourced from public domain sites in addition to photographs I have taken on visits to botanical Gardens etc., in addition to scans of drawings, etching etc.