Jean Arp and drosophila

Volume folded onto itself. Immobile. Waiting. A microscopic organ in the body of an embryo of Drosophila, the fruit fly. An imaginal disc, just one of many embryonic cell islets, lying dormant, awaiting the propitious moment.

When brutal metamorphosis begins, transforming larva to adult form, many of the larva’s cells will self-destruct. In this new body, sculpted by death, those cells that once slept within imaginal discs suddenly begin to proliferate, and the disc is transformed as an adult organ: a wing, an eye, a leg, an antenna.

The same set of spatial forms, in this stone sculpture by Jean Arp. Ebauche, (Outline). Awaiting a metamorphosis that will never be fulfilled. This form is definitive. No tumult of nature will disrupt from within. The artist is not within, he can only scratch the surface...