Science and the sacred meet in two intriguing exhibitions

“Laboratory” at the Zuckerman Museum of Art is an enlightening group exhibition that brings together six very different artists and makes a convincing case for the shared proclivities of artists and scientists in a shared endeavor to illuminate.

Whether revealing the hidden properties of sunlight, radiation, motion, weather or plant life, the “Laboratory” artists share an interest in revealing what is often unseen.

Packed with interesting content and work, “Laboratory” goes even further in bringing together artists who use science in their work. As has been done with other exhibitions at the Zuckerman, the organizers have attempted to put a Kennesaw-specific spin on the exhibit. Historical books from the university’s Bentley Rare Book Collection are included in “Laboratory” to underscore the themes of the show, sometimes very successfully, though sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch to connect an artist’s work to one of Kennesaw’s rare books.

That idea of wedding contemporary art, science and historical document works especially well in artist Karen Rich Beall’s unnerving sculptures. Beall has often drawn from the natural world in her work, putting a slightly sinister spin on its operations. In “Laboratory,” Beall offers close-up, sculptural renditions of lichen and slime molds in works as creepy as they are lovely.

Beall’s microscopic take on the natural world is nicely complemented by a book featuring ecstatically detailed drawings of plants by English botanist Nehemiah Grew, whose tomes are housed in Kennesaw’s rare book collection. Grew’s drawing of a wormwood root intersects science and art in its own right, illustrating the delicate precision of the natural world in one exquisite drawing.

Bringing form and meaning to the seeming chaos of nature continues in Nathalie Miebach’s crazy-cool models of natural phenomena including hurricanes and weather patterns. Instead of the graphs and diagrams that more often convey scientific data, the artist translates barometric pressure, humidity and temperature data into sculptural riots of color and form featuring plastic beads, origami and basket weaving that suggest a mash-up of high-concept contemporary art and elementary school science fair project.

Equally clever are the synthesized musical pieces that play in the gallery, which Miebach has also created using weather data. The whorling, cacophonous compositions work quite well with artist Robert D. Flowers’ equally dynamic, puzzlelike motion study “Dynamism of a Figure No. 2,” a video that unfolds like an animated kaleidoscope or an abstract art take on the “Transformer” films.

By design or coincidence, there are some interesting similarities between “Laboratory” and a concurrent group show at Zuckerman, “Geometric Aljamia: A Cultural Transliteration.”

If the artists in “Laboratory” seem unified in showing how art can make scientific principles and natural world phenomena concrete and observable, then the artists in “Geometric Aljamia” show how the calligraphy, architecture and other decorative elements of Middle Eastern art strive to make the spiritual concrete and observable. This international group of 10 artists takes the pleasing pattern-making and repetition of Islamic art as their inspiration.

The term “aljamia” refers to East-West hybridization and the translation of one culture’s forms into those of another culture. Most often the artists translate the elaborate patterns found in Middle Eastern art into cut paper works whose intricacy and evocation of the eternal celebrate the structural beauty of the natural world in a way related to Beall’s or Miebach’s work in “Laboratory.”

The majority of artists including Afghan Tamim Sahebzada and American Reni Gower create lovely, hypnotic lacelike patterns from cut paper. An exception to that decorative mode are Jorge Benitez’s architectural drawings on vellum, which imagine the decorative flourishes characteristic of Middle Eastern art as an entrapping, puzzlelike maze.