Delicately Hand-Cut Paper Sculpture Showcases the Microbiological Sublime

Artist Rogan Brown’s paper sculpture entitled Outbreak is an exploration of the microbiological sublime. This beautifully-crafted, hand-cut piece took him over four months to complete and the results are incredible. His delicate, all-white forms are based on the small structures found in the human body. Brown depicts cells, microbes, pathogens, and neurons, tediously cutting and layering paper shapes piece by piece until he had a fully-realized sculpture.

Outbreak is a work grounded in reality but doesn't deny the power of creativity. “I am inspired in part by the tradition of scientific drawing and model making, and particularly the work of artist-scientists such as Ernst Haeckel,” Brown says. “But although my approach involves careful observation and detailed “scientific” preparatory drawings, these are always superseded by the work of the imagination; everything has to be refracted through the prism of the imagination, estranged and in some way transformed.”