Ellen Gallagher: "Osedax" | "Exclusive" | Art21

[ELLEN GALLAGHER: "OSEDAX"]

[MUSIC ECHOES THROUGH GALLERY]

It seems like animation has always been implied in my work,

and has always been moving towards that.

[NEW MUSEUM, NEW YORK CITY]

In the painting, the way that the form is abstracted is like early animation.

I break them down into moving parts.

[SOUND OF PROJECTOR MOTOR]

["OSEDAX" (2010), EDGAR CLEIJNE & ELLEN GALLAGHER]

Osedax is a bone-devouring worm that was recently discovered

off of the coast of Monterey.

What they thought they came upon was a cliff jutting out from an ocean canyon.

They took off a chunk of it and brought it back into the lab.

And they saw that it actually was a whale bone,

and that there were all these plummy forms coming out of it.

And as they looked at these plummy forms they saw they were a new worm

that hadn't been categorized yet.

I was really attracted to the way the scientists described finding the form.

It was such a literary device.

You think you're seeing one thing,

and then it turns out to be something completely different.

This idea of evolution--and evolutionary possibilities--

quite often repeats in science fiction.

For me, the protocols of science fiction

and the protocols of science are not separate--

they're woven together.

Whale fall happens as whales descend through the depths of the ocean at their death.

And it carries with it so much knowledge.

So all those secret passages you hear about

between the Atlantic and the Pacific...

All of these routes then become lost.

So I thought that the osedax worm

inscribes these systems of travel into the bone.

And it's a paper box inscribed on both sides

to signify this kind of carving.

Edgar Cleijne and I wanted to create these passageways in the film.

For instance, we turned a blob of ink into a 3D model,

and so this paper bird swims through this--literally--

through what's a blob of ink is now a tunnel.

Matter is not fixed and is always in motion.

You're dealing with this idea of ecology, transformation, and evolution

into something different.