Artist Rogan Brown plays with the architecture of nature and organic growth. By identifying patterns and motifs that occur in the natural world in different contexts and at different scales, both macroscopic and microscopic, he has developed a formal, aesthetic vocabulary that he uses to construct hybrid sculptural forms, both real and surreal.

In his latest series called Magical Circle Variations, Browns merges these sources of inspiration to reimagine the human microbiome in the form of a coral habitat through intricate paper sculptures. “What the reef and the microbiome have in common is that they both consist of biodiverse colonies of organisms that coexist more or less harmoniously,” Brown explains. “There are further parallels between coral and human beings in that we are both symbiont organisms, that is we depend on a mutually beneficial relationship with another species: coral only receive their beautiful colors from varieties of algae that live on them and human beings can only exist thanks to the unimaginably huge and diverse number of bacteria that live in and on them.”

The intricacy of his paper sculptures are amazing. Hopefully they won't be the only coral reefs our grandchildren will get to see…

[zombify_post]