Mutant Bagua

This exhibition borrows its name from Willliam Gibson’s first published short story, “Fragments of a Hologram Rose.” As the story notes, when a hologram is cut into pieces, even the smallest section still contains the whole of the image. In a similar way, plant cuttings and an edition of digital works can both hold these mirroring elements of origin and multiplicity. The artists featured in the exhibition were asked to imagine and create their own sci-fi plants. Like botanists from a parallel future, these artists cultivated their fictions into existence. They sub-scattered seed pods, pruned polygon cuttings, gave their models plenty of volumetric lighting, and soaked them in fluid simulations. The 3D objects in this exhibition have secret pathways and telepathic tendrils. They bloom on neon skins and disperse nano mold spores through LCD screens. Like an ikebana of poisonous flowers in zero gravity, they hover in the expanse as a collection of fragmented flora files. —Rick Silva