SLOW ARC XI

The Slow Arc series took as its initial inspiration the ground-breaking work of the late British chemist Dorothy Hodgkins who described modelling her discovery of pig insulin as “like trying to work out the structure of a tree, by seeing only seeing its shadow.” The viewer of Slow Arc is placed in a position of pure philosophical objectivity, able to see both the shadows and the platonic machine that created them; leaving the viewer with the question as to whether you would ever be able to deduce the cage and mechanism from its shadow.
Conrad Shawcross’s Slow Arc Inside a Cube XI is part of a series of caged light works by the artist. The piece explores the interplay between light and shadow.
The artist was inspired by the groundbreaking work of the late British chemist, Dorothy Hodgkin, who described the process of modeling pig insulin as being “like trying to work out the structure of a tree by only seeing its shadow.” Similarly, Slow Arc inside a Cube XI invites us to see beyond the limits of human perception. The artwork’s cage casts out shadows in the form of mesmerizing shapes, attempting to convey the expanse of space, depth of time and possible futures contained within our universe.