Nancy Burson's Mary and the Quantum Spheres experience

Nancy Burson’s upcoming solo show Light Matter will host ongoing experiential performances featuring her Mary and the Quantum Spheres sculpture, opening March 21.

Performances will be held every half hour from 1pm to 6pm during gallery hours throughout the exhibition. Participants can shoot video of the observed photons around the sculpture by recording a video on their cellphones in the room’s complete darkness.

Please reserve your space as the room only accommodates 6 participants at a time – Nancy will be your guide!

More About the Experience

“I use glow-in-the-dark statues of Mother Mary and two interlocking spheres as tools for audiences to see and experience the movement of particle physics in the darkness around them. One of the ancient symbols used to represent the Divine Feminine aka Mother Mary was two interlocking circles or the Vesica Piscis. In modern times, physicists have used that same symbol to represent quantum entanglement as a Möbius strip moving between two interlocking spheres.

In these performances, many participants see things they’ve never seen before. Most attendees claim that the statues appear to move. Others see tiny luminous multicolored lights or patches of light. Emergent behavior patterns are also seen as delicate, lattice-like grids of silvery-grey light. There are particles of energy moving constantly around us and I've been photographing and filming them for over 30 years. This is an interactive experience guided by me and in collaboration with the physics surrounding all of us.”

In the beginning of these performances, the statuette of Mother Mary appears quite luminous. However, during the 10 minutes in the darkness of the room, her light fades and the two interlocking spheres slowly take on Mary’s light. It is this transference of light that symbolizes what Burson believes will be humanity’s future shift to physics-integrated faith.

Light Matter, Burson’s debut exhibition at Heft Gallery, expands her inquiry of universal connectivity into the realm of quantum physics with paintings that embody emergent patterns found in everything from the swarming of birds to the distribution of stars across the galaxies.

Her recent body of Quantum Entanglement paintings will be shown for the first time alongside new unique video works from the Quantum Observation Videos series. A selection of Burson’s early composite portraits from the early 80’s through the ‘90s will be displayed as well – created with facial morphing and recognition technologies she pioneered, printed in polaroid and silver gelatin works now found in most major museum collections in the US and Europe.

View the video below for a brief introduction of ‘Light Matter’ – opening this Saturday at 300 Broome St from 5-8pm.