Night Begins the Day: Rethinking Space, Time, and Beauty

@ Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. 

June 18 – Sept 20, 2015

During June18 -September 20, 2015, the Institute For Figuring’s Bleached Reef will be on display in the exhibition Night Begins the Day: Rethinking Space, Time, and Beauty, an examination of artistic responses to “the staggering immensity of nature,” at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

About the exhibition:

“In the eighteenth century, the concept of the sublime became influential among painters and poets due to an increasing interest in the aesthetics of science. Expanding global exploration made people astutely aware of the enormous scale and splendor of the planet’s wild places, and astronomy was revealing the staggering immensity of the universe. The result was a combination of awe and fear—awe at the majesty and beauty of creation, and fear of human frailty, mortality, and insignificance in the light of the vastness of the cosmos. This response itself became a point of interest: how do we existentially resolve our psychology and spirituality with this new information?

Taking its title from the biblical concept that, “the day goes after the night,” (Gen 1:5) at the time of creation, Night Begins the Day is an exhibition featuring the work of twenty-seven artists, scientists, and creative thinkers that, in this current moment of expansion through scientific development, look at three aspects of contemporary art that can be seen as emerging from the historic precedent of the sublime: technological innovation; new understandings of time; and new expressions of awe and fear that have emerged from contemporary irony and cultural critique.”

CJM exhibition curator: Renny Pritikin, with associate curator Lily Siegel. 

The IFF’s Bleached Reef is an installation of handicrafted corals evoking, through the collective work of women, the beauty of living reefs and the threats they face from global warming. Reef design by Margaret and Christine Wertheim. Crochet coral pieces by Christine and Margaret Wertheim (CA/Australia), Marianne Midelburg (Australia), Nancy Lewis (VT), Helle Jorgensen (Australia), Sarah Simons (CA), Evelyn Hardin (TX), Arlene Mintzer (NY), Jill Schrier, (NY), Pamela Stiles (NY), Dagma Frinta (NY), Christina Simons (CA). With vintage doilies by unknown makers, and miniature beaded-coral towers by Nadia Severns (NY).

Artists featured in Night Begins the Day include Peter Alexander, Lisa K. Blatt, Peter Dreher, Moira Dryer, Werner Herzog, Institute For Figuring, Robert Kooima, Michael Light, The Long Now Foundation, and Fred Tomaselli.

Night Begins the Day is accompanied by an illustrated catalog with essays by the curators, along with Dodie Bellamy and Nathaniel Deutch.

Exhibition webpage. 

Contemporary Jewish Museum
736 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
415.655.7800
info@thecjm.org

Margaret Wertheim in the” Fohr Satellite Reef”- at the Museum Kunste der Westkuste, Fohr Germany, 2012.

On Thursday April 30, Cabinet magazine is hosting a book launch and discussion for the IFF’s newly published Crochet Coral Reef.

Please join us in Brooklyn to celebrate. The evening will feature a presentation by Reef co-creator Margaret Wertheim, followed by a discussion between her and McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene.

Copies of Crochet Coral Reef (Institute For Figuring Press, 2015) will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
McKenzie Wark is the author of The Hacker Manifesto, and most recently, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (Verso Books, 2015). He teaches at the New School for Social Research.

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer, curator, and director of the Institute For Figuring. With her sister Christine Wertheim she created the Crochet Coral Reef project which has been exhibited at the Hayward Gallery in London and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, and will be on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts during summer 2015.

Date: Thursday, 30 April 2015, 7–9 pm
Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn (map and directions here)

Event webpage here.

The Grandeur and Limits of Science

IFF director Margaret Wertheim is the subject of this week’s edition of On Being, the acclaimed NPR program hosted by Krista Tippett. In a discussion that ranges widely across disciplines Wertheim discusses the roots of the IFF’s work at the interface of science, mathematics and art, with forays into her life as a writer who has also authored books about the intersection of science and religion.

“A passionate translator of the beauty and relevance of scientific questions, Margaret Wertheim is also wise about the limits of science to tell the whole story of the human self. Her Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles reveals evocative, visceral connections between high mathematics, crochet and other folk arts, and our love of the planet.” –— From the On Being website

Listen to Podcast.

This interview was conducted at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, as part of the public programming for the forthcoming installation of the IFF’s Crochet Coral Reef project in the MIA’s summer exhibition Leonardo da Vinci, the Codex Leicester and the Creative Mind, June 21 – August 30, 2015

In San Antonio, Texas, IFF Director Margaret Wertheim will present a public lecture on the Crochet Coral Reef project for the 2015 McMahon Fiber Symposium at the San Antonio Public Library. Held in conjunction with the opening of a major Crochet Coral Reef exhibition at the Southwest School of Art, Wertheim’s presentation will explore intersections between art, craft, mathematics, community practice and the environmental crisis facing reefs worldwide.

This lecture will also kick-off the making of a San Antonio Satellite Reef, in which citizens of Texas will construct their own southwestern-inspired crochet coral landscape.

On Thursday February 12, join us at the Russell Hill Rogers Gallery at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio Texas for the opening of the IFF’s latest Crochet Coral Reef exhibition, featuring our giant Coral Forest sculptures and a selection of miniature coral Pod Worlds.

Opening Reception: Thursday February 12, 6-8pm.

Exhibition Dates: Feb 12 – April 26, 2015.

“Coral Forest: Stheno” from the “Crochet Coral Forest” series by the Institute For Figuring, 2014.

The latest community Reef is kicking off in Minnesota. Join Crochet Coral Reef co-creator Margaret Wertheim for this workshop at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts where she will launch the making of the Minneapolis Satellite Reef. Over the next five months, citizens of the Twin Cities will construct their own coral reef to be exhibited during summer 2015 in conjunction with a major exhibition of the IFF’s Crochet Coral Reef at the MIA.

Reflecting on intersections between art and science, the upcoming MIA exhibition is anchored by Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Leicester Codex, the notebook in which the Renaissance master sketched his ideas about water both figuratively and conceptually. In addition to Leonardo’s sketchbook, the exhibition includes works by several other practitioners working at the interface of art and science around the theme of water; along with the IFF’s Crochet Coral Reef will be a high-definition, hydrologically inflected video by Bill Viola.

Concurrently with the MIA exhibition, the Minneapolis Satellite Reef will be exhibited in the brand-new gallery space at the headquarters of the Mississippi Water Management Organization.

Crochet Coral Reef workshops will be held throughout the week in and around Minneapolis:

Wed Jan 28:

6-8pm @ MIA, Logan Recreation Center

Fri Jan 30:

10am-Noon @ Mississippi Water Management Organization

2-4pm @ MIA, Target Wing

Sat Jan 31

10am-Noon @ Bloomington Arts Center

1-3pm: @ MIA, Target Wing

If you are in Minneapolis, join us at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts where IFF director Margaret Wertheim will be interviewed by NPR’s Krista Tippett for her renowned radio program On Being. Broadcast date to be announced soon.