Mia Rosenthal: Paper Lens

Mia Rosenthal’s recent visit to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland inspires her new drawings made especially for Paper Lens. In her painstakingly crafted drawings, Rosenthal takes viewers from Earth to space and back again: the surface of a pizza takes on the cragginess of the moon’s surface, and sprinkles on donuts begin to resemble a star nebula. She shows us how even the tiniest details of life relate to one another.

It is no wonder that Rosenthal became interested in particle physics and its study of the smallest components of the universe. Rosenthal will explore this invisible world that can only be seen through microscopes and telescopes in new work and a site-specific wall drawing for Paper Lens. Ultimately, she seeks to better understand how visual artists interpret knowledge that cannot be seen by the naked eye. In doing so, Rosenthal's work addresses in numerous ways the overarching question for the 2015-2016 season of the Morris Gallery program: How do artists make the invisible visible?

Paper Lens marks the relaunch of PAFA’s Morris Gallery program. Inaugurated in 1978 to present the work of living artists in the Philadelphia region, the Morris Gallery program expanded over 30 years to show work by some of the most influential artists of the time, both inside and outside Philadelphia. PAFA is reinvigorating the Morris Gallery as a showcase for a diverse array of emerging and mid-career artists from the Philadelphia region and beyond that reflects the pluralistic nature of art-making today.

Watch a time-lapse video of Rosenthal creating her wall drawing.