Life Forms

In Life Forms, Laura Stack explores the awe-inspiring complexity of the natural world and the underlying forces that create it. The content of her work stems from a fascination with developmental biology and the contradiction that living things can now embody synthetic elements. The very definition of what constitutes "life" has become more elusive due to developments in synthetic biology. Stack contemplates this paradigm shift by painting an imagined view of a “new natural.”

In her painting and collage process, she imagines otherworldly living forms and environments and envisions a fluid spatial world with its own laws of physics. Fractal patterns, fungi, and marine life inspire the imagery as well as geologic processes such as lava flow and mineral formations. Stack’s work implies a frozen moment in the process of becoming, evolving towards an amalgam of something both natural and artificial.

Laura’s exhibit features a large-scale vinyl wall piece that is a collaboration with artist Melissa Breitenfeldt.

Opening and showing concurrently with Shifting Baseline Syndrome, work by Eleanor McGough