copyright 1998 THE TIMES MIRROR
COMPANY
“Bioethics: Thresholds of Corporeal Completeness,” a
timely group show curated by artist Deborah Edwards at
Side Street Projects, probes such hot-button issues as
reproductive rights, human cloning, biological warfare and
genetic testing. The artists in this exhibition suggest
that, with
every biomedical leap forward, the individual’s ethical and
emotional burdens grow heavier.
Ruth Katz, Aline Mare, Lisa Schoyer and Erika Rotheberg
convey a sense of bemusement at the tangled web of choices
brought about by advances in reproductive technologies and
genetic engineering. Katz takes large-scale color
photographs of
a woman contemplating a range of contraceptive devices; Mare
digitally alters the embryonic photographs used by
anti-abortion
activists; Schoyer displays medical charts and documentation
relating to her son’s rare genetic disorder; and
Rothenberg’s
witty text and photo piece relates a cheerfully narcissistic
fantasy
about raising a cloned daughter.
Joy Garnett’s blurry paintings of X-ray images
invest a cold and
“objective” science with emotional content, while Nora
Murphy’s soggy birthday cake painting evokes the
gravitational
pull of decomposing flesh. Philip Riley, Hilary Lorenz and
Susan Rankaitis use digital and experimental forms of
photography to depict microbes and DNA strands; David
Kremers “grows” an abstract painting bt placing bacteria
that is
genetically engineered to produce various colored enzymes
onto
an acrylic plate; and Martin Betz, Mike McMillan and Endi
Poskovic address issues relating to eugenics and ethnic
cleansing.
The show’s standout works include Dinh Q. Le’s
heartbreaking—and horrifying—“Damaged Gene,” composed of a
videotape and several relics from an August public art
project in
which Le opened a store in Ho Chi Minh City that sold toys
and
clothing for conjoined twins and children born with Agent
Orange-related birth defects; Lisa Stanley’s richly detailed
Plexiglass dollhouse, each room a different stage of life
mediated
by medical technology; and Ken Gonzales-Day’s ominous,
strangely seductive digital photographs of skin lesions and
dermatological growths.
* Side Street Projects, 1629 18th St., #2, Santa
Monica, (310)
829-0779, through Dec. 19. Closed Sunday-Tuesday.
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