Specimens: Weird Contemporary Abstract Art Forms

3D Plush soft sculptures inside glass Erlenmeyer flasks.

Specimen display by Ayin Es at UCLA Medical Center.


There's a little mad scientist inside of me that likes the idea of creating weird-looking, single-cell biological creatures. I think if I wasn't an artist, I would have most definitely been a scientist of some sort, but because of all the schooling you need, I probably would have had to settle on working in a lab somewhere and would be doing something pretty menial. In my free time however, I would be studying up on the universe and quantum physics, and naming my children after Max Planck.

There is a fictional story I made up about how these sculptures came to be. They were invented by a mad scientist by the name of Dr. Edvard Salvador Hawaiianstein who worked at the Ethereal Research Labs in East Los Angeles and called these things "Bacterribles."

Bacterribles were originally found everywhere from bathroom stalls in Bombay, to North America in little pockets inside sweater vests, growing on hamburgers, and underneath fancy ladies wig hats. From there, they developed in the laboratory of imagination, inspired by fungi, disease, atoms and cells, sea life, animals, cartoons, and weird-ass visions.