Since their teenage years, identical twins Doug & Mike Starn have used their art as a means of exploring the physical and intellectual world around them. As conceptual artists using photography as their primary medium, they incorporate elements of sculpture, installation, video and architecture in their practice, resulting in a body of work that defies classification and simplistic analysis. In the Structure of Thought series (lots 12 and 239), the Starn brothers explore the sun and its power as a source of light and the life that it gives by photographing one of nature’s grandest forms- trees - in silhouette, their branches weaving together to create a web of interconnectivity. Working with various translucent papers on which each of the photographs are printed- here Thai mulberry, gampi and tissue paper- the photographs are then intricately layered together with encaustic, wax and varnish to create a tableau that fosters a dialogue between the tensions that arise from within, at once light and dark, delicate and monumental, individual and connected.

Other works by the artists are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ; the Jewish Museum, New York; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Yokohama Museum of Art, among others.