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For more information, please contact Adam Kubota at 860-685-2806 or akubota@wesleyan.edu

Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery Presents

Ellen K. Levy: evolution(to the nth power)

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Exhibition Explores issues of Genetics and Capitalism.

Ellen K. Levy: evolution(to the nth power)

Ezra and Cecile Gallery, Wesleyan University

283 Washington Terrace

January 28–March 5, 2006

Middletown, CT, December 8, 2005—Nina Felshin, curator of Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, is pleased to announce its new exhibition, Ellen K. Levy: evolution(to the nth power) on view from Saturday, January 28 through Sunday, March 5, 2006.  The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Friday, January 27th from 5–7pm with a gallery talk by the artist at 5:30 pm. The Zilkha Gallery is located at 283 Washington Terrace in Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts.

As part of the Samuel L. Silipo ’85 Distinguished Visitor lecture series, Levy will give a slide presentation about her work on Tuesday, February 28 at 4:30pm in Zilkha Gallery room 106.

Ellen K. Levy is a leading figure among contemporary artists who are charting the course of what she refers to as “cultural evolution.” In the age of biotechnology, these artists are looking beyond Darwinian evolution to new lineages and life forms.  Levy’s work demonstrates her fascination with the genetic patents that have helped foster this new kind of evolution—one that is distinctly unnatural. Through the aesthetic transformation of images and text from patents, Levy creates evolutionary charts of technological inventions that demonstrate how the patenting process can highlight the clash of ethical, economic and medical goals.  “Corporate interests and society’s needs,” comments Levy, “are frequently at odds with each other.”

 
evolution(to the nth power) , which is comprised of scrolls and outsized “patent” drawings, speaks to our collective imagination in a language that is seductively aesthetic and cerebrally challenging. Her “collaborations” with inventors transform and combine images and texts from registered patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database to create a genealogy of inventions. These multi-media works explore the intersections of several industries (e.g., the biotechnology, oil, space, and nuclear industries) and offer a running commentary on the nature of capitalism, innovation and our expansive desire to invent future worlds leavened by poetry and wit.

Ellen Levy is a New York-based artist and teacher and is the president of the College Art Association.  She has exhibited her work in galleries, museums and alternative spaces in the United States, Europe and Israel. Levy teaches at the intersections of art and science, combining a theoretical and hands-on approach; she also lectures and publishes widely. Currently she is teaching at Brooklyn College. In 1999 she was a Distinguished Fellow in Arts and Sciences at Skidmore College with a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. She was guest editor of Art Journal in spring 1996, compiling a thematic issue entitled “Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code.” At the time, this topic was little explored. Through February 4, 2006, a solo exhibition of her work is on view at the Michael Steinberg Gallery in Chelsea.

Ellen K. Levy:evolutionn is presented in conjunction with the premiere of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s Ferocious Beauty: Genome. For this premiere, Wesleyan University is collaborating with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange by providing programming designed to engage the public in actively grasping both the mechanics and implications of genetic science.

At 7pm on January 27th, following the exhibition’s opening, students from Liz Lerman’s repertory class will perform works they collaboratively developed with the Dance Exchange that resonate with the themes of Ferocious Beauty: Genome.

The Center for the Arts is an 11-building complex on the Wesleyan campus that houses the departments of art and art history, music, theater and dance as well as film studies events and classes. It serves as a cultural center for the region, the state and New England. The CFA includes the 400-seat Theater, the 260-seat Cinema, the World Music Hall (a non-Western performance space), the 414-seat Crowell Concert Hall and the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.

Admission to Ellen K. Levy: Evolutionn is free and open to the public. Gallery Hours are 12-4pm Tuesday-Sunday. For more information or directions, call 860-685-3355 or visit www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.