"See Is Knowing: The Body" website
Art and science come together in a fascinating new exhibit opening Friday, September 14 in the Carleton College Art Gallery. “Seeing is Knowing: The Body” celebrates the common goals of art and medical science—knowledge and understanding realized by visual means. Combining anatomical illustrations with contemporary art inspired by images created for medical use using both traditional and innovative technologies, the exhibit explores the human condition with a focus on the human form.
“Seeing is Knowing: The Body” opens with a lecture by Dan Bruggeman entitled “The Wonderful Becomes Familiar and the Familiar Wonderful.” An instructor of observational and figure drawing at Carleton and an established artist represented by Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis, Bruggeman has long investigated the ways of knowing through seeing—through the eyes of a painter. Bruggeman’s lecture will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Boliou Hall, room 104, followed by an opening reception from 8:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the Carleton Art Gallery.
Along with richly illustrated historical medical atlases and a selection of historical texts on loan from Carleton’s Gould Library Special Collections and from the Bakken Library in Minneapolis, the exhibition presents new pictures and projections by six contemporary artists including Justine Cooper, Katherine Sherwood, Leigh Anne Langwell, Christine LoFaso, Harry Clewans, and Eric Avery. Following in the footsteps of pioneer anatomists such as Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), these artists embrace the future by adopting the latest imaging technologies, transforming diagnostic MRIs, x-rays, CAT scans and other processes with creative intent.
Justine Cooper, an Australian-born new media artist who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., creates a new type of self-portrait constructed from MRI scans of her body. Katherine Sherwood, based in the San Francisco Bay area, embeds her own post-stroke brain scans into heavily pigmented paintings which double as healing emblems. New Mexico artist Leigh Anne Langwell, who worked as a medical photographer for 17 years, simulates interior “bodyscapes” in photograms connecting the mysteries of the microscopic inner world with the cosmic reaches of outer space. Christine LoFaso, from Chicago, borrows pictures of bodily fluids and tissues from textbooks and then transfers these along with texts onto billowing fabric, thereby stimulating subjective musings about social norms, personal identity and body image. Bay area artist Harry Clewans adopts anatomical illustrations as the matrix for creating extravagantly detailed, multi-layered woodblock print collages. And Texan Eric Avery, both a practicing physician and artist, uses bold graphics in what he calls “Art Actions” to educate vulnerable publics and advocate for better health care in America.
“Seeing is Knowing: The Body” runs through October 14, 2007. The Carleton Art Gallery is open Monday through Wednesday, noon to 6 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, noon to 10 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. For more information on the exhibit or for disability accommodations, call the Carleton Art Gallery at (507) 646-4342.
