Skip to Main Content

Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–⁠2020: Helen Pashgian at Chen

Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–⁠2020

Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–⁠2020: Helen Pashgian at Chen

Pink circle of lightCrossing Over concludes with a special installation by acclaimed Light and Space artist Helen Pashgian, the lone woman to join Caltech’s newly created artist-in-residence program in 1969. Two years later, she exhibited her first resin-based lenses at Caltech’s Baxter Art Gallery. Pashgian’s radiant lens of 2023, displayed in a temporary pavilion at Caltech’s Chen Neuroscience Research Building, reflects her longstanding interest in the effects and perception of light. “One must move around to observe changes,” she notes about the shifting appearance of her transformative works. “Coming and going, appearing and receding, visible and invisible—a phenomenon of constant movement. It touches on the mysterious, the place beyond which the eye cannot go.”

 
Helen Pashgian, Untitled, 2023