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Art and science make fascinating bedfellows in the latest exhibition at the Block Museum of Art, The Heart’s Knowledge: Science and Empathy in the Art of Dario Robleto. By J.P. Anderson All images courtesy of the artist
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hat does a cardiograph have to do with a work of art? Everything, if you’re Dario Robleto. The practice of the San Antonio-born artist (and current artist-at-large at the Block Museum of Art) is built around the idea that artists and scientists have much more in common than might be obvious; now, his works—from photolithographs to immersive video installations and sculptures, each exploring the connection between scientific technology and ideas of human empathy—are on expansive display at the Block’s new exhibition, The Heart’s Knowledge: Science and Empathy in the Art of Dario Robleto. Here, Michael Metzger, the museum’s Pick-Laudati Curator of Media Arts, discusses the significance of a variety of pieces included in the exhibition. Through July 9, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu
The human pulse may be the most legible of all life signs. Symbols of near-universal recognition today, the representations of the heart’s pulse as a wave dates back to 1854, when German doctor Karl von Vierordt preserved the first visual record of heart activity by tracing a pulse on a strip of candle-sooted paper using a stylus made from a single human hair. Robleto describes this groundbreaking innovation as ‘not only medical but also poetic and philosophical in the long arc of human self-reflection.’” “‘First pulse,’ 1854, from the portfolio ‘The First Time, The Heart (A Portrait of Life 1854-1913)’” (2017, photolithography, hand-flamed and sooted paper, image lifted from soot with lithotine, fused with shellac and denatured alcohol)