DELTA TIME

EXHIBITED @ www.gallerythe.org
September 16, 2003 through June 7, 2004

"DELTA TIME" is the mathematical expression for 
"change over time." In general, traditional  visual 
art is thought of as static and in two or three 
dimensions, and traditional film and video thought of 
similarly as incorporating and recording the passage 
of time. In this exhibition entitled "DELTA TIME,"  
2-D and 3-D works are foregrounded as functions of 
time increments. Julianne Swartz creates an 
installation of reflected lights and actions from 
indoors and outdoors that change instantaneously, 
from moment to moment, 24/7. Lambert Fernando 
layers his work  with a special coating that 
degrades itself daily as a result of exposure to 
changing heat, humidity, and light, gradually 
exposing an underpainting. Fred Fleisher and Jona 
Lagman trace their singular but parallel past 
histories and trajectories "from geeks to superstars" 
in an installation that updates itself periodically 
during the course of the exhibition. Each work in 
"DELTA TIME" deploys temporal elements in subtle, 
startling, and humorous ways./B>



DARK SCIENCE

EXHIBITED @ www.gallerythe.org
March 26, 2003 through May 30, 2003

The works selected for "Dark Science" deploy elements 
of dark humor as a self-reflexive commentary on 
scientific pontifications and their tenuous equations 
with truth: William Byrne's three channel animation 
invokes a mechanistic humanless ecosystem; Stephen 
Olivier's paintings of interpretation of medical 
x-rays of tragic phenomena, phocomelia and cylcopia, 
are set against those of mythological beings, eroding 
disbelief in their impossibilties; Fred Fleisher's 
surveillance schemes, couched in uneasy cute and 
cuddly doll, found object, and stuffed animal 
chimaeras, belie a panopticon society and covert 
agendas./B>



COMPLETED BY NATURE

EXHIBITED @ www.gallerythe.org
January 21, 2003 through March 21, 2003

"Completed by Nature" is an exhibition that looks at 
the active and passive interactions of the artist and 
his/her natural surroundings, the end result of which 
is translocatable to fit within the context of 
contemporary visual art. One renown example is 
Walter De Maria¹s "Lightning Fields" in which the 
artist has removed himself and the installation is 
completed by Nature. At the other end of the concept 
spectrum is an artist who considers herself to be a 
work in progress, waiting to be inspired and 
"completed by nature itself." Between those poles are 
artists who "collaborate" with insects/animals and 
plants; artists who work with natural forces 
(a river will ³paint² a canvas for an artist; an 
artist¹s painting is left outdoors to be altered and 
"completed" by the freezing temperatures)./B>



ECCO VANITAS

EXHIBITED @ www.gallerythe.org
November 5, 2002 through January 17, 2003 

"Vanitas" is Latin for vanity, referring to a type of
still life consisting of a collection of objects that 
symbolize mortality, the fragility and impermanence 
of human life and the transience of earthly pleasures 
and achievements (e.g., a human skull, a mirror).  
Such paintings were particularly popular in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in the 
Netherlands. "Ecco Vanitas: Rethinking Still Lives" 
poses the questions: what constitutes a contemporary 
vanitas framed within current scientific thought? How 
does the mapping of the human genome and cloning affect 
notions of im/mortality. How does the research that 
problematizes stem cells and the arguably perverse 
technology that produces featherless chickens impact 
issues of the self? How do these concepts best find 
form in tabletop assemblages, paintings, boxed 
constructions, or other forms of art? The artists who 
were selected responded to these questions in inventive
ways. Amy Hotch collapses the private setting of passion 
and procreation, dormancy and dreams, the mattress bed, 
with synecdochal images by painting human-sized 
chromosomes atop its surface. Jeph Gurecka and research
scientist Jeff Wyckoff team up to present a living 
vanitas which draws us in as eye-witnesses to devolving 
skulls cast in bread, and comment on the close
approximations of detritus and life. Alyce Santoro 
combines the cabinet-of-curiosities, botanica, and 
apothecary with the vanitas in her multidimensional 
installation, tweaked periodically throughout the 
duration of the show.