From Forces to Forms

Presented at Pratt Institute’s Manhattan Gallery and curated by Ellen K. Levy, a multimedia artist, scholar, and past president of the College Art Association, “From Forces to Forms” explores the nature of form by engaging with the potent forces and processes of nature. By investigating how physical laws shape living and nonliving forms alike—ideas first proposed by D’Arcy Thompson in his classic tome “On Growth and Form” (1917)—the exhibition explores universal principles of organismic development while delving into the flux and perturbations that characterize life today.

Reflecting Pratt Institute’s commitment to interdisciplinarity, “From Forces to Forms” features works by 19 artists and designers whose practices draw from both art and science and articulate a shared commitment to creating a more sustainable world. These works consider the implications of form generation through a variety of media (from analog to digital) at different scales (from subatomic to macroscopic) and in varied contexts (from prebiotic to ecosystems).

Artists:
Ricci Albenda
Gemma Anderson
Tauba Auerbach
Lillian Ball
Adam Brown and Robert Root-Bernstein
Marta de Menezes and María Antonia González Valerio
Janet Echelman
Ursula Endlicher
María Elena González
Haresh Lalvani
William Lamson
Oliver Laric
Christy Rupp
Todd Siler
Paul Thomas
Meredith Tromble
Victoria Vesna