By Cansu Waldron

Chris Klapper and Patrick Gallagher are a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary duo whose collaborative practice explores the space where visual art, particle physics, and material experimentation meet. Working across sound, sculpture, video, and digital media, they translate complex scientific ideas and mathematical structures into immersive, sensory-driven artworks. Their practice is driven by a fascination with scale — finding ways to express vast, abstract systems through tangible forms that can be experienced on a human level.

Since beginning their collaboration in 2010, Klapper and Gallagher have developed a body of work that merges ancient visual traditions with contemporary digital processes. Their projects often draw inspiration from the quantum world, transforming scientific data into physical artworks, from marble-dust mandalas inspired by subatomic collisions to algorithmic paintings generated through custom C++ software. Rendered through techniques such as dye-sublimation on aluminum, these works create reflective environments where the viewer becomes part of the image itself.

Their ongoing research has been shaped by collaborations with scientists, including a residency at Fermilab, and continues in projects such as their recent exhibition Before Measure, where they explore how the invisible structures of the universe can be translated into visual and spatial experience.

We asked Chris and Patrick about their art, creative process, and inspirations.

How did your collaboration begin, and what led you to build a shared practice around art, science, and technology?

Our first direct collaboration began with our hugely successful installation, ‘Symphony in D Minor’. This project was an immersive, interactive thunderstorm that merged intricate physical sculpture with video projection and atmospheric sound design. Working together greatly expanded the scale of our ideas and by merging our independent technical strengths and distinct creative approaches, it ultimately pushed our work into far more ambitious territories.

We are both drawn to phenomena and ideas that exist just beyond everyday perception. Even in the case of our thunderstorm it was about recontextualizing experiences and finding beauty and awe within the forces just outside of our perception.

‘Symphony’ was very tech intensive and resulted in us seeing technology as a natural tool for exploring our artwork. Over time, our experimentation and curiosity evolved our work into a broader practice where art and science became one and the same. Our approach to technology offered new and unique ways to translate complex systems into physical experiences on a more human scale.

Gallery view of Pseudovector, Wave Function, Singularity

How do you approach working with concepts from physics and mathematics as part of your artistic process?

We come to physics and mathematics as artists who are captivated by the beauty within the language of the universe. We approach these not as subjects to illustrate, but rather, as conceptual landscapes, sources of patterns, structures, and ways of thinking about reality.

It is important to delineate that while yes, our work is very much about science, it is at the same time NOT about science. Meaning that, while our work is heavily informed by scientific and mathematical concepts that we find fascinating, what we are looking to express and draw attention to is the awe and grandeur of reality and our place, as individuals, in this most incredible universe by creating work that offers beautiful questions for people to ponder.

Our process begins with conversation and deep dives into research. From there we look for poetic qualities hidden within the ideas. In the case of physics, ideas such as symmetry, probability, emergence, or the strange beauty of scales that are either unimaginably large or incomprehensibly small. Rather than explaining the science directly, we translate its rhythms and geometries into visual language with the goal of sparking a sense of curiosity.

We developed our own custom software for our most recent work, which allows us to paint with algorithms in a virtual environment. This lets us experiment with structures that echo the behavior of quantum systems. The final pieces are a visual interpretation of the patterns and energies that science reveals.

Can you talk about the development of your recent exhibition Before Measure and the ideas that shaped this body of work?

Before Measure grew out of ideas we encountered during our artist residency at Fermi National particle accelerator laboratory. We became fascinated by the immense power contained within infinitesimal energies and the profound complexity of the quantum world.

The exhibition explores the moment before something becomes measurable, before a system collapses into certainty. In physics, so much of reality exists in probabilities and fields rather than fixed objects. That concept resonated deeply with us as artists.

The works translate those ideas into abstract compositions built from algorithmic structures and layered color fields. Using dye sublimation on aluminum, the imagery becomes fused directly into the metal surface, creating a reflective quality that pulls the viewer into the piece. The mirror-like surfaces integrate the surrounding environment and the viewer themselves, subtly reinforcing the interconnection of all things in the universe.

Gallery view of Quantum Tunneling and Wave Particle

How has your collaboration with researchers at Fermilab influenced the direction of your practice?

Fermilab was genuinely transformative for us. Being immersed in that unique environment, a place where the world's foremost experimentalists and theorists are working at the absolute frontier of human knowledge, inevitably changed how we think about scale, time, and existence.

We went into the residency, not to illustrate science; but to absorb it. We sought to understand the culture of scientific inquiry, the language, and the intellectual discipline that drives high-energy particle physics. It was an intense period of deep intellectual osmosis.

We are very much drawn to raw curiosity and the willingness to question basic assumptions about how the universe works. This experience seeded the body of work that has defined our practice since. It continues to critically shape how we approach our artistic practice.

Over the years, your work has taken many forms — from early installations to recent explorations of particle physics. How has your practice evolved since your collaboration began?

As interdisciplinary artists, our creative process is driven by a philosophy of continuous evolution. We embrace the notion that the artistic journey should not be constrained by a fixed style. Instead of operating within set boundaries, we allow each new project to dictate its own process, methodology and aesthetic form.

This fluid approach of letting the concept lead the form, ensures our output remains diverse, impactful, and authentic to our artistic expression.

Installation work continues to remain a central focus. Conceptually the goal remains the same: translating immense ideas into experiences that people can encounter directly.

What questions or ideas are currently shaping your work?

The work in Beyond Measure will be a series we continue to explore for the foreseeable future, both in terms of physical 2D artwork, as well as larger scale immersive installations. And we will continue to dive deep into the quantum world and follow the mysteries of our invisible universe. We have several opportunities to continue developing the program through new direct collaborations with physics institutions. We are very excited to see where this might take us.

Beyond that, we have several projects currently in development that will return us to sculptural interactive installations.

Looking ahead, what directions or projects are you interested in exploring next?

We’re continuing to deepen our collaboration with scientists and researchers. These exchanges often lead us into conceptual territory we haven’t discovered yet.

We have a number of new projects currently in development. We can’t divulge too much at the moment, but will say that we are very excited about what comes next.

With regards to technology, so much is happening very fast. With new developments coming from every direction with LLMs and material processing to name a few. It’s impossible for any artist working within new mediums not to be thrilled by our collective creative horizon.

Ultimately, our goal remains the same: to create work that invites people to contemplate the profound beauty of the structures underlying reality.

What else fills your time when you’re not in the studio?

Curiosity bleeds into everything we do. Travel, hiking, exploring unfamiliar places, good food, and long conversations all tend to feed back into the work in one way or another. Many ideas actually begin far from the studio.