Science meets art: Japanese artist turns preserved animals into masterpieces


Those preserved animals you dissected in science class are now also artwork that prices up to $20,000 yen or $250. Iori Tomita, a 28 year old Japanese artist, transforms dead animal carcasses into colorful art through a long and tedious scientific process that can take him months, even a year.

Designboom reports that Tomita removes the skins of animals preserved in formaldehyde then soaks the creatures in a mixture of blue stain, ethyl alcohol, and glacial acetic acid. He then breaks down the protein and muscles through the enzyme trypsin to give them a ghostly transparent look. The bones are then soaked in potassium hydroxide and dye and preserved as stained masterpieces in glycerin.

Tomita first learned his trade as a fisherman and has cultivated a niche where science meets art and skeletons meet artistic immortalization.

 “People may look at my specimens as an academic material, a piece of art, or even an entrance to philosophy,” Tomita said on his website. “There is no limitation to how you interpret their meaning. I hope you will find my work as a ‘lens’ to project a new image, a new world that you’ve never seen before.”

Tomita’s art is apart of a long line of strange and unusual art including a cat that was transformed into a helicopter. Tomita’s art is not sold outside of Japan yet but has caught on with 20 to 30 year old Japanese women. Tomita plans to branch out to “art centers like Paris, London, and New York,” according to the Huffington Post.

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