Auburn, N.Y. – As a child, artist Werner Sun spent hours folding origami and making geometric forms out of construction paper.
That early exposure to shapes and patterns led Sun not only to his career as a scientist but also his art making practice.
“Geometric patterns illustrate how mathematics can cross the boundary into physical space, as shown by their widespread use in art, design, and architecture,” Sun said in a 2018 article for Interalia Magazine. “Patterns also play a role in science.”
His work, on display at the Schweinfurth Art Center and Cayuga Museum of History & Art through May 17, 2025, merges digital photography and paper folding techniques to create sculptural works that hang on the wall or dangle from the ceiling.
Sun’s is the first of two exhibitions this year featuring emerging artists, selected by a joint committee of previous artists and staff from both institutions.
Sun is a particle physicist by training who has searched for subatomic particles beyond the Standard Model at Cornell University’s CLEO detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring. He earned his undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard and his PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology. He currently serves as IT director for the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education.
It’s not unusual for scientists to also be artists.
“As an artist, I play with my visual materials the same way I played with data as a scientist,” Sun said. “My work is about perception and knowledge – the process of figuring things out – how we take facts or materials and organize them, transform them, and interpret them until they become something meaningful.”
This piece, “Big Bang 10,” was created in 2021 when artist Werner Sun was still dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work is based on photographs taken of a glitching computer monitor, a metaphor for what the world was enduring. This piece is on display at the Cayuga Museum of History & Art in Auburn.Werner Sun
That’s how he came up with his method for creating sculptural works. While experimenting with folding his digital prints, he imagined a photograph shaped into a raised pattern. He set some parameters – cutting and pasting was allowed – and began experimenting until he settled on the snub square tessellation as the best fit.
A tessellation is a tiling pattern that repeats with one or more shapes and covers a plane with no gaps. A snub square pattern combines triangles and squares.
More experimentation followed until Sun made a discovery.
“I fold my prints into geometric patterns by following an algorithm (or recipe) that I invented,” he said. He discovered a way of folding and cutting a single sheet that almost completely preserved the connection between the shapes.
“I also follow a looser algorithm going from one piece to the next; often, I use photographs of a finished piece as source material for a new piece,” Sun said. “And that new piece, in turn, gives me source material for the piece after that, and so on.”
Visitors can easily track the transition through his artwork. The Schweinfurth is displaying his pieces from the “Double Vision’ series, which were created in 2018 and 2019 and feature multi-panel pieces that evoke a fragmented experience of looking.
Cayuga Museum hosts two different series of works: “Big Bang,” which channels his pandemic-era anxiety through photographs of a glitching computer monitor, and “Rose Window,” an extended improvisation on mathematical diagrams, landscape photographs, and calligraphic drawings/paintings.
“Having my work displayed in both the Schweinfurth and Cayuga Museum makes the exhibition so much more interesting,” Sun said. “I love seeing how my geometric vocabulary interacts with the different architectural styles. It adds a whole new dimension to the work.”
Sun will give an artist’s talk about his work at 3 p.m. May 3, starting at the Schweinfurth and moving to the Cayuga Museum.
The talk, which is part of the grand opening celebration of the West End Arts Campus, is free and open to the public. For more information about Sun’s work, visit wernersun.com.
Ithaca artist Werner Sun created this piece, “Double Vision 1A,” in 2018. The two-panel piece evokes a fragmented experience of looking. This piece is on display at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY.Werner Sun
If you go:
WHAT: “How Did We Get Here?,” an exhibit by emerging artist Werner Sun
WHEN: April 4 through May 17, 2025
WHERE: Schweinfurth Art Center and Cayuga Museum of History & Art, 205 and 203 Genesee St., Auburn
HOURS: Schweinfurth is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays; Cayuga Museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays
COST: $15 for joint admission to both facilities
ARTIST’S TALK: 3 p.m. May 3, 2025, starting at the Schweinfurth and moving to the Cayuga Museum. Talk is free and open to the public.