Exhibit packs insightful punch

The Desotorow Gallery's most recent conceptual exhibition, the Science of Art, remains open to the public until Aug. 31. The exhibit features several established artists from Savannah and around the country with works inspired by technology and the human body.

Tucked away in an inconspicuous lane at 2427 De Soto Ave., the Desotorow Gallery is a short walk, dense with art and art aficionados. The community-oriented outreach project allows artists of all levels and forms to converge at a hip, yet modest location with inexpensive exhibition space. The well-lit and intimately confined room for the Science of Art lends well to the overall meaning of the subject: the fusion of disparate realms of thought.

"The concept, science of art, really attempts to reveal a greater relationship between the two than what is commonly assumed," said Hillary Caird, program manager. "When you see these two areas fused together in one room, that relationship suddenly makes much more sense."

The works of the exhibit offer clever and fresh perspectives as well as unique visceral experiences. They pack quite an insightful punch, given the inexplicable conditions of the human body and uncertain plausibility of futuristic technologies.

One particularly novel piece invites the viewer to use a powerful microscope to view a collection of blood slides, all of which are engraved with thought-provoking and often cryptic messages.

By far the most eye-catching work of the exhibit, entitled "Rx," displays a bizarre barrage of warped fluorescent orange plastics across one wall in a suggestive falling action.

"The intersection of sex and science is where I stand," said Jasmine Begeske, the artist behind "Rx." "I want viewers that enter any installation to feel they are standing at that same crossroads, the juxtaposition of sex and the medically intervened intercourse, chance and order, organic and controlled, private and public."

Another series of works entitled "Entelechy: Potentiality Has Become an Actuality" presents both a profound statement on the exhibit's concept and an exciting optical illusion. These pieces are comprised of diagrams of the body's most vital organs cut from the pages of various medical textbooks. Aimee Howard sums up her notion of her work in a way that speaks for all the pieces of the show and the rationale behind holding such an exhibit.

"When illness or disease permeates our lives, these advancements in science, technology and medicine become seemingly incomplete," said Howard.

"Even with volumes of medical information the most primal of questions... are too complicated and unanswerable even for science."