Katja Novitskova, “Earth Potential (Cuttlefish Love, Earth)” (2017), digital print on aluminum, cut out display, steel and aluminum armature (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic).

Oh, these are all so dynamic and wonderful!

…This fuzzy zone of magical looking is where Estonian artist Katja Novitskova operates, and her current exhibition in New York’s City Hall Park is a wonderfully incongruous reminder that all our photos are manipulated.

EARTH POTENTIAL, a Public Art Fund exhibition, is that rare outdoor photography show that actually works. Instead of the usual billboards or placards clumsily affixed to a wall or fence, Novitskova’s photographs are printed on freestanding aluminum panels between six and eight feet in diameter, lending them sculptural dimensionality. Most combine two elements — one astronomic, the other microscopic — printed on separate, custom-cut supports.

[…]

Two of the seven pieces in EARTH POTENTIAL feature just one scientific image rather than a pair — one is a bulbous cluster of orange stem cell embryos, the other a towering, pale pink strand of E. coli bacteria — and they are the show’s most abstract and ambiguous. Without the humor of juxtaposition and jarring shifts of scale of the other pieces, they confront us with the enormous power of scientific imagery and the frontiers of microscopic photography. They also hint at places where the boundaries of human knowledge are butting up against the limitations of human morality.

Katja Novitskova, “Earth Potential (E. coli)” (2017), digital print on aluminum, cut out display, steel and aluminum armature.

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