Questions of Nature: The Art of Ned Kahn

“Sometimes,” says Ned Kahn, “I refer to my artworks as ‘Questions of Nature.’ I’ve heard scientists use that phrase, referring to their experiments. But there’s a difference between what scientists do and what I do.  Their questions are very specific; they’re looking for concrete answers. In my ‘experiments,’  I’m also asking questions.  But I’m not seeking numerical answers; I’m seeking visual ones.”

It’s a rare moment when we can actually join an artist in the search for beauty and balance.  Ned Kahn’s 14 exhibits in Astronomy Hall, all inspired by natural phenomena, allow us to do just that.  We can engage directly in the questioning process -- finding answers, perhaps, that even the artist never experienced.

Ned Kahn was born in 1960.  He studied botany and environmental science at the University of Chicago.  From 1982 to 1996, he was Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. While creating some of their best-known exhibits -- like the wonderful “Tornado” -- he worked closely with Dr. Frank Oppenheimer, the museum’s legendary founder and director.

“It was wonderful,” Kahn recalls. “I finally had someone I could ask all these questions that had been puzzling me for years. Questions like, ‘What actually flows through a wire when you turn on the light?’ Frank loved questions like that. He would take me through every electricity exhibit in the museum -- then end his long explanation with, ‘Basically, we don’t know what flows through a wire!’ ”

The itchy truth -- that there are limits to what we can really know about nature -- informs all of Kahn’s work.  It’s no wonder, then, that he’s continually drawn to the biggest mystery of all: the Universe.

Kahn’s fascination with astronomy was sparked by images: photographs of cosmic structures like galaxies and nebulae, gas giant planets, and comets. He was thrilled by the fact that these huge objects are in constant motion. “You see a picture of a galaxy,” he says, “and you know that stars are speeding through it, gases are flowing in, and jets of plasma are shooting out. I wanted to see these things move. I wanted to animate these images; that was my jumping-off point.”

To accomplish this, the artist combines familiar elements like fog and air, water and sand, air and water. The fluid, ever-changing results often bear startling resemblances to astronomical phenomena. “It’s sort of mind-boggling,” Kahn says gleefully, “that a whole bunch of stars can behave in ways that are somewhat similar to a whole bunch of tiny water droplets.”

Kahn draws inspiration from innumerable scientists, and from artists as diverse as Jackson Pollack, Andrew Goldsworthy and Alexander Calder.  But he owes an equal debt to his years of meditation practice. Half-joking, he claims that he would like visitors to envision Astronomy Hall “as a Zen rock garden -- applied to the world of planetary phenomena.”

It's an apt suggestion. Our contemporary culture -- so obsessed with the Internet, TV and computer gadgetry -- provides people with fewer and fewer opportunities to observe things closely.  Ned Kahn's primary goal is to create sites and objects that encourage such contemplation.

In Astronomy Hall, Ned Kahn has created an entire family of such exhibits: artworks that bring vast natural processes within our reach, and send our imaginations on a journey through the Cosmos.