Petri Dish Installation

ByMetanexus Editors

Klari Reis uses the creative process in both painting and science to explore and document the natural and unnatural world with a sense of wonder and hope.

Currently working in San Francisco, the artist recognizes that Northern California hosts more life science companies than anywhere else in the world. Her artwork is a product of biological techniques, which provide context for the artworks and explore the increasingly fuzzy line between the technological and the natural.

Reis is grounded in actions and reactions with a new media—plastic-epoxy polymer. Similar to resin, the UV-resistant plastic is her method and language for exploring and expressing interactions on a microscopic level. Compositions offer brightly colored smears, bumps, stains, and blobs atop aluminum and wood planes. She pigments the plastic with powders, oils, acrylics, and industrial dyes through many layers of the ultra glossy plastic. These bleed, blur, shift, and spread, becoming remarkable through their eccentric detail. A technician of sorts, studio as laboratory, Reis has turned the invented process into a science in the service of art.

Reis continues to develop the process and the exploration in her installation works, Hypochondria. The projects consist of hand-painted Plexiglas Petri dishes depicting microscopic images mounted on the wall at varying distances in groupings of 300, 150, 60, or 30 pieces. The effect is of brilliantly colored life forms dancing across the wall, the playfulness—hopefulness—belying the serious nature of the subject matter. These installations are meant to embrace biotechnology and advances in science.

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Author

  • Klari Reis is an artist living and working in San Francisco, California. She received a degree in architecture from the University of California Davis but then went on to study art at City and Guilds of London Art School. She works in plastic-epoxy polymer.

    Klari Reis’ work has been exhibited in the USA, Italy, Germany, Spain, Scotland, England, China, and United Arab Emirates. Her work is in the many public collections including the MEG Centre in Oxford, England; Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines; Morley Fund Management in London; Standard Life Investments in Bristol and London; as well as a number of hotels and restaurants. Her paintings are in the private collections of contemporary art patrons world-wide and have been featured in international publications such as The New York Times, Elle Magazine, Time Out London, Artweek San Francisco, Giornale del Medico (Italy), The Times (London), The Independent (UK), Scottish Field Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Financial Times, BBC1, CNN, and MarketWatch.

    www.klarireis.com

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