Reception for Synapse 15: Intersections of Art and Science

Join us for extended hours at this celebratory reception for Synapse 15.

Ten artists will be on display at the Emily Davis Gallery for the Synapse exhibition: Judy Pfaff (Tivoli, NY), Jenny Sabin (Ithaca, NY), Terry Winters (New York, NY), NERVOUS SYSTEM (Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jessie Louis Rosenberg of Palenville, NY), Mark Dion (Copake, NY), Stacy Levy (Spring Mills, PA), John Roloff (Oakland, CA), BeTA_S (Diane Davis-Sikora, Akron, OH, Rui Liu, PhD, Linda Ohrn-McDaniel), Nathalie Miebach (Boston, MA), Wong Kit Yi (New York, NY and Hong Kong).

Synapse Art and Science Series at The University of Akron probes ideas, images, and mutual interests to connect the art and science disciplines. Akron’s place in the Cuyahoga Valley and its legacy as a city of invention and making are highlighted in the exhibition. Synapse focuses on artists and designers, as well as science and engineering collaborators who explore the natural world. The artists on view in Emily Davis Gallery choose to consider issues as challenging as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and sustainability and as fundamental as abstraction, mechanics, material processes, and the perception of a viewer.

Artists choose materials and processes to convey meaning and to apply specific qualities to their work. They look to 3.8 billion years of nature’s strategies and design to influence what to select and how to construct their work. While their approaches range from the metaphorical and abstract to applied solutions, each responds and learns from the natural world to inform their efforts to invent and communicate who we are in this moment.

Now, and for the past 15 years, the goal of Synapse is to develop conversations between artists, designers, scientists, engineers, businesses, and colleagues in social sciences and humanities to encourage innovation and community engagement. This process is often characterized as messy, full of differing viewpoints and the unknown. It is precisely this unknown melded with curiosity that makes it interesting and worthwhile. This exhibition features collaborative teams across many media and interests that embrace this challenging space where risk and failure are balanced with points of insight and a drive to make change happen.

In keeping with the spirit of connections that Synapse fosters, the works on display are loosely organized around themes such as time, data, material, and environment. Consider how your own interests and questions are viewed through the lens of another discipline. How could these points of view inform and develop your own thinking, actions, and making?

This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, GAR Foundation, Akron Community Foundation, the Myers School of Art Residency, and numerous private donors. We are grateful for our partnership with FRONT International 2022.

Synapse will be running concurrently with FRONT International and featuring work from FRONT artist Wong Kit Yi.

The exhibition is on view through September 30.