Join us for a celebration of the new works of art and the atrium’s dedication to Audrius and his wife Sigita, on Monday, May 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. Enjoy the newly installed and permanent artworks, meet the artist and take part in the atrium’s official dedication ceremony.
Chicago-based contemporary artist Audrius Plioplys has been a professional neurologist and artist for more than 40 years. A neo-conceptual, metaphorical investigation of thinking and consciousness, Plioplys’ work seamlessly combines visual art and neurology to explore the human psyche. With over 50 individual exhibits and 100 group shows, his works are displayed in museums, universities and major art collections around the world.
In his Cycles of Memory series, Plioplys explores the constantly changing nature of human memory in three parts:
Pillars of Thought: These 9 color-changing LED sculptures are free-standing and independent, representing our human existence. The images consist of three layers of neuronal profiles intertwined by Plioplys’ own MRI brain scans, overlapping and corresponding to our own three levels of awareness: consciousness, subconsciousness and unconsciousness. Lit from the inside, the structures offer striking views from the atrium’s façade, especially after dark.
Whirling Memory: Rotating at three revolutions per minute above the atrium floor, these three newly-installed 8 x 4-foot pieces are printed on semitransparent media and slowly turn, representing the cycle of the human memory. Kafka and Beckett, Sybils: Libyan and Persian and Sybils: Erythraean and Delphic all explore the literary and philosophical ideals that shape human consciousness.
Midwest Souls: Visible from the atrium’s second floor window, Midwest Souls are three light sculptures depicting cabinet photographs from the late 1800s, collected from flea markets. Featuring individuals from all walks of life, the color-changing works are lit by LED and capture the subjects, forgotten by time, in an effort to cycle them back into memory.
“While scientific, Plioplys’ images are not antiseptic. The formation of personhood and the absorption of information become striking images that merge the scientific, the personal and the cultural,” said SIFK director Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer. “This is another reason we at the Institute fell in love with his art. We too know that information is anything but antiseptic and emerges at the intersection of science, culture and the person – a multiplicity of interactive layers that make up the human and what he or she knows.”
“Cycles of Memory is a culmination of my life’s work,” said Plioplys. “The space seems to have been designed to perfectly showcase the pieces and I could not be more thrilled to provide pieces for display, both on loan and permanently.”
Cycles of Memory will remain on display at the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge through Friday, June 21. Four “Pillars of Thought” pieces will remain on display permanently in the newly dedicated Sigita and Audrius Plioplys Atrium.