2024, Solo show, Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles
The exhibition’s title, von Neumann’s Dream, is inspired by the interdisciplinary thinking of John von Neumann, a Hungarian-American that was instrumental in the development of early computers and their architecture.
Taking cues from von Neumann’s interest in the intersection of mathematics, biology, and technology, as well as his research in the evolution of social behaviors in biological systems, Komar has created her own visual language, one that combines a historical approach of non-representational painting with new technological advancements in the medical field that utilize glass and electroplated polymer forms. The results are stunning wall-based works that exist as a hybrid of painting and sculpture.
Komar renders her painted substrates with short bursts of undulating brushstrokes that create an implied organic movement. She often likens her luminescent surfaces to the invisible substrate of the natural world, oscillating between a macro and micro point-of-view. Surrounding the painted panels are sculptural forms made of highly durable semi-translucent or electroplated polymer and rendered in high definition. Reaching around the edges of the paintings like organic tentacles, these forms reference the natural world, while also being entirely alien. The painted panels and sculptural forms have a peculiar co-existence, one that is at times symbiotic and at others parasitic.
The foundation of Komar’s practice is rooted in an investigation of synthetic biology, eroding the boundaries that distinguish the natural from the engineered. Organic, cybernetic, and inorganic organisms blur into hybrid forms that open new possibilities for how we understand the world around us. As the diversity of some species wanes, other, new and hybrid, beings inevitably morph, develop, and thrive - merging biological and artificial systems of life. Just as Charles Darwin put it in "On the Origin of Species," life's grandeur lies in the evolution of countless beautiful and wondrous forms from a simple beginning, Komar asks that we to let go of the artificial boundaries that have governed our understanding of the natural world and embrace the possibilities of a new amalgamated future.
Photography by nazariancurcio.com
HOME >>>