Works by artist Meg Brown Payson in the “Spark of Life: Abstraction, Microscopy, and Discovery” exhibit at UNE. Photo courtesy of UNE

In an 1889 essay, the ever-eloquent Oscar Wilde wrote, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” At the Portland outpost of the University of New England Art Galleries, you can debate the merits of this pronouncement for yourself. “Spark of Life: Abstraction, Microscopy, and Discovery” (through Feb. 16) pairs the work of three contemporary artists — Jackie Brown, Meg Brown Payson and Carter Shappy — with photography from the school’s imaging lab.

These artists are not responding to the imaging specifically, yet their work is clearly rooted in the processes of life and nature. As such, they reflect abstract patterns observed in aquatic life, in the human body and throughout other natural phenomena.

So, from Maine ceramic artist Jackie Brown, we get “The Aggregate Series,” in which she has cast handmade ropes and knots, sticks, branches and vines, to create a meandering glazed ceramic wall sculpture. The process obscures the individuality of each separate material, unifying them into a single visual language that can suggest many things, including fossils, circulatory systems of the body, ossified forms, lianas and more.

The piece is spectacular, seemingly sprouting from and growing along a wall, then creeping around a corner to the perpendicular vertical surface. It feels wondrous, yet also lethal, as though it could ensnare and strangle us.

Jackie Brown, “The Aggregate Series,” ceramic sculpture installation Photo courtesy of UNE

Detail from “The Aggregate Series” by artist Jackie Brown (2024)  Photo courtesy of UNE

Nearby is an image of a “Cross-section through a cluster of sensory neuron cell bodies called the dorsal root ganglion.” Yikes! The label helpfully explains that “DRG are the site of neurons that are responsible for detection of peripheral environmental stimuli and conveyance of that signal to the spinal cord and brain.” It is easy to see how “The Aggregate Series” can correlate to the idea of a conduit for conveyance  — for chlorophyll if you are thinking about vines, say, or blood if the sculpture reminds you in some way of circulatory channels of veins and arteries.

Yet these comparisons needn’t be limiting in the sense that we need the scientific imaging to correspond in some way to the art. One of the joys of the imaging created by Peter Caradonna, manager of the Histology & Imaging department at the Center for Pain Research at UNE, is that they possess their own kind of beauty. They, like most of the work on view, are about abstraction, specifically its materiality — that is, the existence of colors, patterns and phenomena as expressions of matter.

Whether a painting or colorful imaging of a rat brain, these are all a form of matter, the thing through which life is expresses. Within them is an awe-inspiring complexity that only becomes richer for its abstraction. If these images and artworks were figural, for example, our brains would instantly ascertain their nature as animal, organ or plant (at least as we know it) and stop there. In doing so, we miss the infinite intricacies that compose the whole. Through abstraction, we are forced to open our minds and entertain more possibilities inherent in what we are seeing.

Payson’s paintings, for instance, are a prime example. Her wall label expresses our limitation beautifully: “I am fascinated by the way what we see is both informed and obscured by what we know… The images I make evolve from paint poured in layers to create odd shapes and unexpected relationships of color; these are then deliberately enhanced or minimized to follow a flicker of memory or an echo of a natural order. My work is both an act of devotion to this place and a disciplined effort to see the rich complexity of a wild world I can never know completely.”

So, what do we see when we look at this coastal Maine painter’s suite of six large works? The colors and patterns can resemble impacted leaves on a forest floor, underwater vegetation viewed from above the surface of a pond, moonlight penetrating a forest canopy, lava swirling in a caldera, stars effulging from behind gaseous nebula. One really cannot say with certainty, and it is the uncertainty that keeps us looking and divining, the uncertainty that fuels our amazement at the incalculable, unquantifiable mysteries of life and existence.

Carter Shappy, “The Brooder,” archival inkjet, MDF, acrylic, enamel, silicone (2024) Photo courtesy of UNE

Finally, we have the marvelous shaped works of Portland-based Shappy. These feel most related to the biological depictions of Caradonna’s images. Carved from MDF and painted with oil, acrylic and ink, they can resemble organs: a pancreas or a brain, for example. Some of the titles, however, refer to process or to fantastical creatures. “Decalcomania” normally refers to the surrealist technique of pressing paint between sheets of paper (Shappy is primarily a printmaker), yet they can look all the world like nodes of human tissue. “Gallop,” on the other hand, reminds us of a protozoan life form whose five lower appendages are propelling it along in a kind of canter.

Carter Shappy, “Chimera!,” archival inkjet, MDF, acrylic, enamel, silicone (2024) Photo courtesy of UNE

Many of these works are from Shappy’s “Viscosotypes,” which he has described as creating “a self-multiplying microverse of shapes, patterns and objects with an evolving mythology of their creation and purpose.” That mythology, like the body and its networks of systems, are still not fully understood, and Shappy clearly revels in lingering in this liminal state of ambiguity.

Near two works whose black and white palette make them appear like brain tissue or coral forms—“The Brooder” and “Chimerical!” — is a laboratory image described as a “Composite of three brain hemispheres labeled using target-specific antibodies for identification of different cell populations.” It is an excellent example of how much, yet how little, we really know, as well as the way we can lean into abstraction as a kind of open-ended inquiry into life’s biggest questions.

IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Spark of Life: Abstraction, Microscopy, and Discovery”
WHERE: UNE Art Gallery, 716 Stevens Ave., Portland
WHEN: Through Feb. 16
HOURS: Noon-5 p.m. Thursday-Sunday (closed through the holiday until Jan. 9, though available by appointment)
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: 207-602-3000