Biophilia
By (Author) Christopher Marley
Abrams
Abrams
1st April 2015
United States
General
Non Fiction
Individual artists, art monographs
Nature in art
704.943
Hardback
288
Width 265mm, Height 314mm, Spine 35mm
2190g
New York Times Bestseller
Christopher Marley's art expresses his passionate engagement with the beautiful forms of nature. Beginning with insects and moving on to aquatic life, reptiles, birds, plants, and minerals, Marley has used his skills as a designer, conservator, taxidermist, and environmentally responsible collector to make images and mosaics that produce strong, positive emotional responses in viewers. Marley has a brilliant eye for color and pattern in different natural objects, and he expertly captures the deep relationships among them. Biophilia (literally, "love of living things") is a must-have for nature lovers, designers, artists, craftspeople, and anyone looking for visual inspiration in the arts.
Christopher Marleys Biophilia is much more than a sumptuous coffee-table pleasure. It is also an elegant manifesto meant to nudge us off our couches and easy chairs and out the door. * The New York Times Science Times *
Nature can seem messy, chaotic, even frightening, but in Christopher Marleys world, its a bounty of useable materials that can be infinitely organized and aestheticized. * Slate *
While (Christopher Marleys) work is motivated by aesthetics, many of the artists mosaics tell scientific stories, particularly those that include organisms that are genetically related but live in different parts of the world. . . . He painstakingly arranges according to color to highlight their striking visual relationships. * Smithsonian.com *
Even the hard categorizations and taxonomies of a natural history museum dont hide the beauty of the world. . . . But rarely do you get to see those specimens side by side. . . . Marley chooses his juxtapositions carefully to emphasize the full spectrum of color displayedand replicatedin the natural world. His chosen flora and fauna bring out each others best hues. * Wired.com *
As an artist, [Christopher] Marley offers a perspective on nature thats more corporeal than conceptual. It manifests itself in clean lines and axesorbiting specimens that have passed from life to deities of art. * Audubon.org *
Christopher Marley is an artist and designer who uses natural artifacts as his medium of expression. To create this work, he collects specimens in an environmentally responsible manner from a worldwide network of people who share his passion for nature. His popular first book, Pheromone (2008), focused on his artwork with insects. He lives and works in Oregon.