by the AMVA4NewPhysics press office

It is an interesting observation that a very small fraction of the Venice high-school students who prepared artworks for the “Art & Science Across Italy” initiative of the CREATIONS network  produced paintings.

I am sure that if you polled 15 to 17 year olds around, asking them “give me an example of an artwork”, most would respond “a painting”. And yet, they shied away from it. I suspect that the main factor in their choice of expressing themselves through other art forms is that a painting is seen as something you can do only if you can paint well; creating an image exposes you to more direct criticism from your peer than creating an abstract assembly or some 3D concoction.

The work presented here is one of the few paintings produced by the Venice students. These are Giammarco De Bortoli and Jean-Zacharie Mariethoz, from Liceo “Benedetti”. Their painting, produced with an aerograph, is in bright complementary colors. They provide the following explanation of the image they produced (in a quick translation, of which you will forgive the inaccuracy):

“In order to understand matter at a subatomic level, humans are limited to collide it with other matter and observe the result. Similarly the artists, putting the unknown object between themselves and the canvas, spray color, getting to represent only an ill-defined figure that leaves a trace of the subject of the investigation.”

The result is shown below.

benedetti03_1