Doug and Mike Starn

My introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Absorption + Transmission, at the National Academy of Sciences

INTRODUCTION

Providing a point of reference that embodies both literal and symbolic meaning, Mike and Doug Starn utilize the theme of light as a central component in their work. Light, an inherent element in both vision and photography, is a simple yet powerful vector of life, knowledge and enlightenment. The Starns’ researches have spurred interconnected bodies of artworks that combine seemingly classical images of trees and leaves, branch-like angiograms, and other complex patterns that allude to the cardiovascular system and the neuronal structure of the brain.
In these interpretations of flora, trees—dependent on photosynthesis and its carbon deposits—become the calligraphy of the sun and are a point of entry into the body of work called Absorption of Light, the Starns’ territory of philosophical investigations.
A photograph is vision and thought written by light in its opposite. Paradoxically, black is not a void of light; black is filled with light, black is a reservoir of light: in the Starns’ conception, black illuminates.
Through their innovative and conceptual layering of images of natural phenomena with those made by the most advanced scientific and medical technology, the artists establish a unique lexicon of visual metaphors. The Starns have drawn on a variety of techniques from the history of photography and the current digital age to create this body of work. By mingling the antique with the contemporary, both in subject matter and materials, the artworks are a reflection of veins flowing between many branches of knowledge.
“We cannot understand the forces which are effective in the visual production of today if we do not have a look at other fields of modern life.”
This statement, made by the German art historian Alexander Dorner in the early part of the twentieth century, resonates in the work of Doug and Mike Starn. Perhaps, because they are identical twins, their existence is already a coincidence of nature decodable by science, and their art is intuitively interdisciplinary. Art and science merge when a gnarled black branch reaches for the light and our thoughts stretch to follow its lead, or the initial visual impact of a leaf magnified for inspection dissolves into delicacy: The Starns link the evident and the ephemeral. Their process is based on the idea that visual art exists as a laboratory for knowledge, both physical and philosophical. Their work serves as both a record of observation and a portal for contemplation.
—JD Talasek