Katie Caron: Neuron Forest

Dairy Arts Center McMahon Gallery

2590 Walnut Street (26th & Walnut), Boulder, CO 80302

September 15-November 11, 2023

Admission: $5 dollar suggested donation

Review by Bella Malherbe

Intricate flowing systems that mingle, connect, and divide from one another exist in everything that moves. Imagine the rooting systems of plants, the complex network of river systems, and the jutting flashes of lightning as they find their way to the earth. These complicated structures scaffold how we think, move, and comprehend the world around us through the consciousness that constructs the pathways of our neurons. The artist Katie Caron plays on this dynamism of the neuron and nature’s unconscious geometric patterns in her new exhibition Neuron Forest at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder.

A view of Katie Caron’s exhibition *Neuron Forest* at Dairy Arts Center. Image by *DARIA*.

Caron has “always been compelled to create work inspired by nature’s geometries, specifically the self-similar branching fractals in our brains: neurons.” [1] She meditates upon these somatic and extra-somatic pathways and the “technologies we have invented to image what takes place at an almost impossibly small scale, in the dark.” [2] Her exhibition situates us in this dark space, lit only by colored light that casts strange, multidimensional shadows on the white gallery walls. A hauntingly beautiful soundtrack by data-driven artists Chris Chafe and Greg Niemeyer contributes to the show’s liminal atmosphere.

Katie Caron’s series *Branching Structures*, 2022, laser-etched intaglio print on porcelain with LED lights, 8.5 x 11 x 4 inches each. Image by *DARIA*.

In her series Branching Structures, Caron displays printed porcelain panels in boxes illuminated with LED lights and hung on the wall, like shadow boxes holding dried plant matter. Each work is an etching of divaricating natural structures, including the mapping of an optic nerve. The images come from scientific diagrams which Caron prints on “porcelain paper” with an ink she developed to withstand the temperatures of the kiln.

One work in Katie Caron’s series *Branching Structures*, 2022, laser-etched intaglio print on porcelain with LED lights, 8.5 x 11 x 4 inches. Image by *DARIA*.

After firing, these sheets are extremely thin and slightly translucent, allowing light to shine through and irradiate the complex webs of the specimens. Caron foregrounds and quite literally illuminates the repetitive process of diverging, seeking, and optimizing flow within our natural world, expanding our understanding of the minute infinities of division and bonding that live everywhere.

An installation view of Katie Caron’s *Somatic Botanicals*, 2023, porcelain, dimensions variable. Image by *DARIA.*

Katie Caron, *Somatic Botanicals*, 2023, porcelain, dimensions variable. Image by *DARIA*.

Somatic Botanicals features porcelain sculptures resembling blooming flowers erupting out of circular vases. Branching, colorful floral shapes emerge from central rounded forms that jut out of the wall. The various hues of green and pink coupled with the repetition of the dendritic patterns recall flowers. But the work uses the form of flowers to challenge conventional notions of beauty in nature. It prompts the viewer to look more deeply at the uncanny within the familiar floral fractal forms.

Katie Caron, *Neuron Forest*, 2022, fiberglass, resin, tree branches, and video projection, 10 x 12 x 12 feet. Image by *DARIA*.

For the title piece in the exhibition, Neuron Forest, Caron began with a concept, or rather, a question: how do you turn fiberglass and epoxy resin into a life-sized neuron? She combined “the techniques of ceramics and craftsmanship that are [her] background… [to] see where that takes [her].” [3]

A detail view of Katie Caron’s *Neuron Forest*, 2022, fiberglass, resin, tree branches, and video projection, 10 x 12 x 12 feet. Image by *DARIA*.

Working on a massive scale—something that isn’t possible in her ceramics practice— she created long, white neurons with labyrinths of intertwining structures and installed them as a huge bundle she then bathes in changing, colorful lights. Moving around Neuron Forest, the gallery visitor is able to visualize the physical nature of the unconscious and see linkages between the worlds of design and biology.

Neuron Forest poses questions about nature, biology, and connection. Katie Caron roots up the unexpected—the literally microscopic—and serves it to us in momentous proportions. If you take some time with this exhibition, you will begin to see the world pulsating and flowing alongside you.

Bella Malherbe (she/her) is a bachelor's-accelerated-master's candidate in Art History at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Her research interests include global modern and contemporary art, queer theory, performance, and the imprint. She is set to graduate with a BA in art history in the spring of 2024 with an Honors thesis comparing the performance-based works of art collectives outside of Euro-America after World War II.

[1] From Katie Caron as quoted in the Dairy Center’s Exhibition Guide.

[2] Ibid.

[3] From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkLmsOQLySY [2:00-2:02].