Macoto Murayama: Growth and Form
Lamb Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee
14 May – 20 August 2016
Mon-Fri 09.30-19.00 Sat 13.00-17.00
Macoto Murayama is a Japanese artist who cultivates ‘inorganic flora’. His extraordinary images are created after minutely dissecting real flowers and studying them under a microscope. His drawings are then modelled in 3D imaging software then rendered into 2D compositions on Photoshop before being printed in large scale.
“Here it is, the Flower of Totalitarian Scientific Consciousness: properly fixed, totally measured, strictly nominated and distinctly shown. It is not only an image of a plant, but a representation of the intellect’s power and its elaborate tools for scrutinising nature. The transparency of this work refers not only to the lucid petals of a flower, but to the ambitious, romantic and utopian struggle of science to see and present the world as a transparent (completely seen, entirely grasped) object. Paradoxically, this scientific challenge to measure the Universe might eventually become one of the sources where the art of Murayama draws its strength of fantasy and odour of romanticism, becoming a symbiosis of Botanical Art and Technology.” – Frantic Gallery, Tokyo
Murayama was born in Kanagawa in 1984 and studied Spatial Design at Miyagi University before going on to further research in the Media Expression department of the Institute of Advanced Media Art and Sciences in Ogaki. The influence of D’Arcy Thompson’s work on mathematical biology and morphogenesis is clear in his exquisitely beautiful images.
Find out more about Macoto Murayama's work on the Frantic Gallery's website.
SPECIAL EVENT!
On Tues 24 May at 6pm, the artist will be visiting Dundee to give a talk about his work, followed by a reception in the gallery. The talk takes place in the D'Arcy Thompson Lecture Theatre in the Tower Building and everyone is welcome.
The exhibition and event have been supported by grant funding from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.
This exhibition is part of the Ignite Festival and Print Festival Scotland 2016
