Nicholas Milkovich

Chicago-based artist, Nicholas Milkovich works at the intersection of art and science.

“A career as an engineer always seemed aligned with my inclination toward maths and creating. I attended the University of Virginia for Mechanical Engineering but I also enrolled in art classes with a second major in Studio Art. I soon realised the line between engineering and art was arbitrarily drawn. I decided there and then to explore this intersection and find where my voice falls in the context of the many cross-disciplinary artists who have come before me.”

“The human body is a perfectly-fabricated machine made up of nature’s most clever designs. As a biomechanical engineer and sculptor, my practice sits in a foundation of material science and structure. In this way, my work has always been closely linked to research. All things in biology are made up of networks of smaller microstructures; atoms, cells and limbs are units that interconnect to form meshworks of utility. Connection and configuration dictates the characteristics of the macrostructure. In my installations, I mimic biological motifs in an effort to both overwhelm and control processes otherwise left passive. Calling attention to these features can have the added effect of eliciting the uncanny. I use this register in my work to express feelings of bodily ‘wrongness’, both physical and internal. I also balance that feeling with my own enthusiasm for the body’s complex structure through colour and a wide variety of materials.”

“My favourite part is where the cells cross the corner. It was fun thinking of ways to make that look convincing. The reference images I used for the layout were black mould, capillaries, yeast, and cave systems. For me, the result is an odd combination of them all.”

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