Neural Migration (2015). 21K and 12K gold, ink, and dye on stainless steel.
Greg Dunn has entered the third dimension. Or, to be precise, his art has, as can be seen in an exhibition at the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
A rare combination of artist and neuroscientist, Dunn began showing his Asian-style paintings of neurons while enrolled in the Perelman School’s Biomedical Graduate Studies program. One of his early shows was at the Burrison Gallery, in Penn’s Faculty Club, shortly before he earned his doctorate in neuroscience in 2011. The show was called, very appropriately, “Neurons and Nature,” displaying his work in enamel, gold and copper leaf, and ink. On display were elegant, colorful, but seemingly straightforward paintings. One depicted autumn branches; another showed stark, leafless trees with a reddish background that evoked sunset. But in the same show, you could see paintings of pyramidal neurons, with their long dendritic trees looking uncannily similar to the “real” trees in the other works. Also included were paintings on scrolls, in the style of the scroll and screen painting done in medieval Japan.
As Dunn has said, “it was a fine day when two of my passions came together” – Asian art and neuroscience. But it was certainly not by chance, given his keen interest in both. Dunn realized that the elegant forms of neurons could be painted expressively in the Asian sumi-e style. “Neurons may be tiny in scale, but they possess the same beauty seen in traditional forms of the medium (trees, flowers, and animals).”
A New Process to Illustrate the Brain’s Complexity
At the time of that show, Dunn explained his attraction to gold leaf and copper leaf. Metal leaf “is a complicated medium to master,” but at the same time, “it brings the painting to life.” The effects of light on metal leaf, he pointed out, can change the painting in interesting ways. More recently, Dunn has taken another step, developing a new process – microetching – that makes his two-dimensional pieces of art appear to have depth. In many of his newer works, he has moved away from the simplicity he treasures in the Asian art in an attempt to suggest the brain’s immense complexity and constant activity. “Microetchings allow the viewer to clearly perceive complex images in a way that is impossible through two-dimensional renderings,” he says in connection with the current show. Now several of the artworks on display seem to be more alive – indeed, more “interesting,” to use Dunn’s deliberately understated adjective.
For example, as viewers move past Chaotic Connectome (2013), they perceive different parts of the image. In general, a connectome depicts the mapping of all neural connections within an organism’s nervous system, akin to a wiring diagram. It is no surprise that such an image looks busy, even chaotic. As viewers pass, what may have appeared first in gorgeous browns, pale yellows, and golds now takes on blues and reds. Different neurons seem to appear and disappear. As Dunn explains on his web site: Chaotic Connectome is illuminated by three colors of light embedded within a custom shadowbox of dark wood. The shadowbox includes a fader to control the intensity of the illumination.
Pranayama (2014). 22K gilded microetching. Greg Dunn and Brian Edwards.
In Dunn’s career as an artist, Chaotic Connectome has a special place. It was his first microetching, which involves etching neurons on metal plates, making microscopic ridges at specific angles to catch light from different sources, then covering the surface with gold leaf. He developed the process with Brian Edwards, an artist and research scientist at Penn who earned his Ph.D. degree in electrical and systems engineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2009. As Dunn notes on a video on his web site, the microetchings “are likely the first of their kind in the world,” and Edwards shares the credit on those works. Like Dunn, Edwards has a practical side as well. As he puts it, “I have had the privilege of being one of the few experimentalists in a mostly theory-based group. It’s exciting to try to design, simulate, and build nuts-and-bolts realizations of my colleagues theories.” Edwards even has some experience as a carpenter.
Another of the very eye-catching works on display at the Mutter Museum is a microetching called Pranayama. In Sanskrit, prana is the life force and pranayama means the extension of the life force. Dunn and Edwards seek to suggest the movement of energy through the body, the inhaling and exhaling. This piece is different from many of the ones on display because it shows the entire human body, a man sitting as if in meditation – but without the covering of skin that would normally obscure the patterns of energy within the body. Depending on which way viewers move, they see the density of energy entering the body as breath does or leaving the body. From a distance, this meditating man with the pale gold currents swirling within and outside his body would not be out of place in a Marvel superhero comic book!
Dunn notes that the microetchings are designed to evolve based on the moving perspective of the viewer. As engaging as the still images are, they cannot capture the full experience of the microetchings.
A Very Tall Building and a Giant Brain
Only about half the works on exhibit are microetchings. An earlier painting is One Liberty, depicting the familiar skyscraper in Philadelphia. Done with gold, dye, and enamel on copper and aluminized panel, it’s an imposing six feet high. No neurons are visible, but Dunn explores the patterns of the different floors and windows, with golden clouds in the background. And the sides of the building, with all their straight lines, seem to be reflecting something more free, something less controlled. As the exhibition note puts it, One Liberty contrasts “the sleek angularity of this iconic building . . . with the chaotic connections and evolutions of the human mind that designed it.” Here Dunn clearly demonstrates that he can handle buildings as well as trees and neurons – and invest it with subtle meaning as well.
Dunn and Edwards are also recipients of a grant from the National Science Foundation. Their project: to produce a giant (eight feet by 12 feet) reflective microetching of a sagittal section of the human brain. With the collaboration of neuroscientists, artists, and engineers, they expect to complete it in 2016, and its ultimate home will be the Franklin Institute. According to the artist-scientists: “This project will almost certainly be the most complex and detailed artistic depiction of the brain ever created.” They have two primary goals, which seem characteristic of their dual interests. First, to use “the unique power of art” to inspire a new generation of neuroscientists and to encourage the lay public to view the brain in a different light. Second, to provide a piece of art aimed at professional neuroscientists that is as close as possible to complete anatomical and functional correctness.
Since his show at the Burrison Gallery, Dunn has had his art on exhibit at the New York Hall of Science, had a detail of one of his microetchings as the cover of American Scientist, been covered in Wired, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post, and appeared on Studio 360, a weekly public radio program about the arts and culture produced by Public Radio International and WNYC in New York City. The jaunty title of that segment: “A Neuroscientist Throws Science Overboard for Art.” Viewers may beg to differ. Instead, it seems the very combination of neuroscience and art that makes the work of Greg Dunn stand out.
Dunn’s exhibition, “Mind Illuminated,” will run at the Mütter Museum through January 7, 2016.