On Tuesday, November 19, there will be an Artist Talk by Laura Splan at the Quorum, 3675 Market St. (1st floor), 5-6 p.m. followed by a closing reception, 6-7:30 p.m. 

BioArt Resident Laura Splan spent three months in Integral Molecular’s lab at the University City Science Center. The culmination of that work, Conformations, is now featured at the Esther Klein Gallery through Saturday, November 23. 

Ms. Splan’s work mines the materiality of science to reveal poetic subjectivities. She used materials found in the lab and recreated conformational change in cells. Her interdisciplinary projects destabilize notions of the presence and absence of bodies evoking the mutability of categories that delineate their status. Her work compels an intimate engagement with detail, calling into question how things are made and what they are made of. 

During her residency, Ms. Splan created numerous photographs, sound recordings and videos. At the end of her residency, she received 200 pounds of discarded wool from animals who are used for antibody production for human drugs. Conformations situates objects made with this hand-spun fiber among sculptures, images and time-based works exploring the metaphors and meta-narratives of cellular biology.