Jody Rasch is a New York City area-based artist whose work is based on themes from astronomy, biology, physics and spectra. The artist has been exhibiting his work nationally for over 25 years. Duality–abstraction and representation, the literal and the metaphorical, science and mysticism, the unseen and the seen–is a predominant theme in Rasch’s work. An expression of both the patterns of the natural world and the metaphors underlying modern science, his art allows us to see the beauty in the repulsive, to find knowledge in the unknown, to observe the unseen to more clearly see our world. By exploring the invisible, Rasch invites the observer to look beyond the “seen” to appreciate the beauty and mystery of the “unseen.” His art challenges us to explore the world around us.
“Art is science made clear.”
– Jean Cocteau (1889 -1963) French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic.
Science has influenced and inspired artists for centuries. In the twentieth century, Kandinsky, for example, incorporated imagery based on amoebas, embryos, and larvae in his work from the 1930s onwards (e.g. Surroundings, oil on canvas, 1936). Picasso was influenced by science and the dimensionality of space and time. Albert Einstein had an enormous influence on a wide range of art movements, including Dadaism, German Expressionism and the Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, and the Surrealism of Salvador Dali[1].
Scientific knowledge and images inform our worldview. Science brings us a landscape that was invisible to previous generations. It can show us the depths of an atom, the inner workings of our bodies and the complexity of our universe.
My work looks for a deeper meaning behind the scientific images and brings up fundamental questions on the nature of our relationships within our society.
The images in this article illustrate two important and recurring themes in my work: healing and thought.
The Healing series shows how the body heals, and, in a broader sense, how, as a society, we need to heal ourselves in the same way. Some of the works show the slow process of the cells in the body working together to repair itself, while others show the individual white blood cells that guard us against outside infections.