Tucker Nichols: Almost Everything on the Table

Even before the digital era, more or less everything you needed to understand about the universe fit on a kitchen table. Small models are a surprisingly powerful way to address big questions. The most unbelievable thing about an equation like E=mc2 is not how complex it is under the hood, but that anything as abstract and simply stated as a formula with only a few terms can have any relationship to a cosmic truth.

Organized in the anyone-can-be-a-natural-philosopher spirit of the Age of Enlightenment, this installation explores the enterprise of curiosity that has produced the most absurd and ennobling understandings of man. With the right tools, you can hold infinity in the palm of your hand. Nichols employs found materials sourced from the beaches near his home in Northern California or those easily procured from his surroundings. Nichols, at his own and Hart’s request, transforms and repurposes man-made detritus culled from the ocean into vessels for pseudo-scientific inquiry.

All of the work in the Almost Everything on the Table is environmental, and with a nod to the inspirational sculptor Isamu Noguchi, explores how big and small forces influence our worldview, including gravity, chance, and electromagnetism. Under these terms, everyone has the capacity to observe how these forces interact. This installation encourages hands-on discovery and is predicated on physical contact with the material.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.