Most of the time, opposites in our world don't complement each other. Fire and water, oil and vinegar, hippies and conservatives. And some include science and art in that list of impossible relationships. However, Guhapriya Ranganathan and Nancy Selvage's exhibition, "Science of Art," takes that dichotomy and marries the opposing elements in a way that is both striking and eye-opening. Two Bostonian artists whose work is displayed in both public and private venues around the city have come to Brandeis to showcase their talents in the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts.Ranganathan's works are quite vivid and conspicuous. The prints on the wall are jagged and seem frantic. The colors, very specific and intentional in their presentation, are bright and immediately eye-catching. But there is a methodical peace surrounding her works. Upon close inspection it's obvious that each line, each color, each parallel stroke was carefully measured and pondered. The only organic shapes were the several oblong pieces of paper inlaid on the print, from which all the jagged lines seemed to be emanating. Inspired by the neural networks from PET?scans of Ranganathan's grandmother afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, the complexity of her pieces are mind boggling as well as logical. There is a very calculating and meticulous aspect to her pieces, many of which have seemingly hundreds of straight lines and scrupulously marked angles that greatly contribute to the "scientific feel" that radiates from her prints.

One of her pieces, a series of four orange prints covered almost fully in black paint, was especially different from the others. The focus of the piece is hundreds of tiny empty dots that show the orange and yellowish paint underneath the black, arranged in one unceasing line, some places angularly positioned and others rounded and smooth; the fractal-like quality is very intriguing, both mathematically and aesthetically. Inspired by the unraveling of DNA, the four prints are some of many that Ranganathan is working on to this day.

Selvage didn't have many works on display at the exhibition, but her pieces were definitely the biggest. One piece, titled "BI OP SEE," was crafted with perforated sheet metal and large, fluid lines. In the piece, there is a single tube in which a purplish-pink foam insert, squishy and organic-looking in texture, is visible. A play on the word "biopsy," Selvage takes the act of biopsying, the removal for diagnostic study of a piece of tissue from a living body, and expands the definition to artistic status with her work. It is a very visually arresting piece with reflective surfaces covering nearly the entirety of the composition and a hazy, moiré-like rippling pattern created by the layers of perforated sheet metal, with the one point of focus being the piece of pink, brain-like foam in the largest reflective tube. "BI OP SEE" is very present and yet delicate at the same time. She had one other piece in the exhibit-a smaller tube of reflective material with a piece of burned fiberglass inside, whose ragged and fragmented appearance seemed to gel smoothly with Ranganathan's pieces while still retaining that eerie quality created by the reflecting material on the tube.

The combination of both scientific inspirations and presentation of artistic form is a very intriguing one, and yet one doesn't see this duality often. Encapsulated quite creatively in the works of Ranganathan and Selvage, "Science of Art" is an exhibition worth attending for appreciators of science and art alike.