Unnatural Science: An Exhibition Spring 2000-Spring 2001

A massive installation in the newly built and widely acclaimed Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Unnatural Science fills 70,000 square feet of gallery space. This awe-inspiring exhibit is comprised of art created over the past 15 years that exploits scientific narratives and aesthetics, particularly those drawn from genetics. The fifteen works of sculpture, photography, collage and mixed media that make up the exhibition are exquisitely reproduced in this catalog, which features full-page color plates and comprehensive descriptions of each work along with biographies of the artists.Humorous and irreverent, though scientifically well-informed, these works owe much to the playful art of Marcel Duchamp in their use of science as a springboard for fantasy. The depictions of maple trees, taxidermy, human genetic material, chemical reactions, the food chain, and other scientifically based phenomena are both poetic and profound, beautiful and visionary. Drawn from various artists, dealers, collectors and museums from all over the world, the works in Unnatural Science hail a significant trend in contemporary art-one that not only demystifies, but poeticizes science.

Laura Heon became the Associate Curator of MASS MoCA in 1998. She has organized a number of exhibitions there, including Billboard: Art on the Road, 1999. for which she authored the catalog.