Preceding the coronavirus pandemic, local artist and printmaker Noel Madrid had started on a series of micro-organism inspired prints before his, and all of our lives, were drastically changed.
But once the virus entered the picture, “it wasn’t much of a leap to zero in on it,” Madrid said in an email. You may recognize his work from the cover of The Sound of Solitude, a 24-hour long collaborative playlist released recently and put together by a group of local sound selectors.
This 24-hour isolation playlist may help you cope during quarantine
Madrid’s interest in the tiny organisms began with an earlier body of work, satiating his curiosity of comparing and layering macro environments, such as road systems and other types of maps, on top of biological structures invisible to the naked eye.
“Grasping at some grandiose notion of a larger picture, I came to the series with a sense of morbid humor,” Madrid said. “The idea that we humans have the audacity to see ourselves as separate from our ecosystem often had an influence on my subject matter.”
While viewers may be able to picture these black and white monotype prints in a full-on gallery show, for Madrid, they’re just a part of his process. The pieces may become reference material for an even more complex series of works in the future. He creates these “sketches” to learn about a subject and determine if he wants to pursue it any further.
His interest in the virus is surprisingly not in its physical structure but how it’s brought to light our habits as a social species.
“It does seem eerily fitting to be experiencing a pandemic of this magnitude while exploring a body of work that looks at the relationships between the micro and macro, domination vs integration, humans vs the known universe,” Madrid said. “It begs the questions, will we ever achieve clean nuclear fusion? Will COVID-19 send us all back to the dark ages? Or will we revert to the status quo and continue pushing our climate toward the next mass extinction?”
Through science and art, Madrid tackles these themes so he can feel a connection to them, even a responsibility. Now, he’s poring over research materials, from scanned microscope images, diagrams and illustrations of COVID-19, as well as other microbiomes, and medical texts and science journals.
His artwork is merrily a byproduct of his love for research, he says.
“I’d like to think that If I hadn’t chosen to study art I would have gone into the sciences, anthropology most likely. Making the prints is as much an excuse to do the research.”
Out of work as an art handler, Madrid’s silver lining is being able to spend more time in the studio which he’s treating as an “unpaid artist residency,” at least, when he’s able to will himself past “the constant low-level anxiety.”
“By exploring these themes through science and art I can begin to feel a personal connection and responsibility to the issues; they become real,” Madrid said.
Scroll down for a full gallery of monotype prints by Madrid, and check out more of his art on Instagram @noelmadridart and website at noelmadrid.com.
