Unraveling at BioBAT Art Space

...Laura Splan spent three months in 2020 collaborating with Integral Molecular scientists Dr. Benjamin Doranz and Dr. Edgar Davidson over Zoom to produce her series...created using Pymol to visualize intricate molecular models of SARS-CoV-2. Splan explains that “by using the specialized features of the software in unconventional ways, I unravel and distort the folded structure of the coronavirus spike protein. I playfully manipulate the folded forms...

...Interdisciplinarity is the foundation on which artist Laura Splan conceives her work...Through her practice, science is moved out of the laboratories while keeping its axioms and experiments present...A number of its mechanisms are paralleled with the cultural dynamics that inhabit our everyday lives, putting a magnifying glass on the interconnections that exist between diverse fields of knowledge...

…While the complex, and often alienating science behind the pandemic has inundated the globe over the past year, artist laura splan dove into the study of virus structures to explore the interconnectedness between cultural and biological systems…

…Laura Splan’s "Unraveling"...is another animation, using molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2 structures to present mobile fractals that made me want to learn more about COVID’s biological formation...

...Looking at these hypnotizing structures is a moment of ephemeral divinity; a tiny glimpse into the dangerous beauty of the world of the virus...

...surprisingly beautiful...That Splan’s erudite aestheticization of COVID-19 can enchant as much as it does is baffling...

...With the coronavirus outbreak, people worldwide have become preoccupied with a threat so physically small that it can’t be seen. The invisible world of viruses has long fascinated multi-media artist Laura Splan, who is artist in residence at a biotech lab...