STRANGE ATTRACTORS

Commissioned by the Hype Park Art Center for the exhibition, Rupturing Beauty, 2002, this sculptural object and installation remakes W.J. Holland's, (The Moth Book), insect setting board in perfect detail and at human scale. A wooden case, itself a relic from the University of Chicago's "Oriental Institute", holds "shingled" butterflies on display. The viewer, drawn to the idealized insect specimens, is never able to fully escape the implications and gravitational pull of the actualized device in their periphery.

Let me propose that the sheer size of the object is a lovely way of proposing the enormous conceptual machinery that is needed–that would be needed–to bring these themes into the twenty-first century. – James Elkins

"Take-a-way" copies of Holland's diagram and instructions are offered up to gallery-goers on a nearby wall. The insect board itself leverages the formal languages and material specificity of late twentieth century sculpture, critically hybridizing the minimalist, the techno-romantic, and the "literalist" re-materialization that has typified prior "Metaobjects". The out-sized stainless steel "insect pins" appear perversely instrumental, making the most direct reference to the connection between violence and idealization.

When the specimen has been killed and is still lax, it is fixed upon a small silver pin of a size proportionate to that of its body, and is then transferred to the setting board.– W. J. Holland

Taken from Chaos Theory, the title Strange Attractors references a component of dynamic systems that increases the likelihood that other components will draw closer to a specific field. Strange Attractors exhibit almost infinite complexity, commonly known as fractals, which can result in ornate mathematical patterns, often valued as objects of beauty, such as the ocular patterns on the wings of butterflies and moths.

So what does an enormous version of an early twentieth-century spreading board have to say about sculpture, about natural history, about the bodies of the collector an the moth, about the environment, and even about late romanticism? Lots of things….– James Elkins