Corpus - Opening Reception

January 26 - April 8, 2018 Opening Reception January 25, 6:30pm - 8:00pm We're pleased to announce the opening reception of Corpus, one in a series of New Media Gallery exhibitions that explore ontological states of being. It is the first of two 2018 exhibitions to explore the future of the human body. Seven artists from Canada/Mexico, US/Brazil, UK, Germany, Israel and Belgium present work and ideas connected with becoming more or less human in a world transformed by new technologies. The word Corpus refers to a whole. An entire body of writing: the ephemeral but whole substance of something, or the main part of an organ or structure. The word originated in the Latin, meaning the body of a human. As such it is a somewhat ironic title; all the works in the exhibition reference something that has been removed or detached from its human housing. These materials, processes and products have been dissected, memorialized, fetishized, commercialized and made other. How and what does the human body mean in a world increasingly transformed by new technologies and largely removed from what might be considered our personal or singular control? Poetic, disturbing and playful; like us they breathe, shuffle, whine and hum. They range from the minute; a petunia seed that has been infused with the DNA of its creator Eduardo Kac. He has been called the most radical figure in the bio-design movement and in transgenic art. He uses biotechnology and genetics to create provocative works that explore and critique scientific procedure. Over six years Kac and Professor Neil Olszewski (Plant Biologist) created a new life form, a plantimal called Edunia; a genetically engineered hybrid of the artist and a petunia. The petunia flower expresses the artist’s DNA through its red veins. The seed and documentation will be part of Corpus. For Corpus, Agi Haines is creating a new edition of an earlier award-winning work; a human-scale neural network that wanders the gallery, bumping and learning even as it seeks comfort. An MRI of the artist’s brain was taken by neuroscientists at Erasmus MC Rotterdam. This was then coded into an algorithm and imprinted on a human-scale balloon that learns about its own anatomy and environment as it moves through the space via a drone. As the drone learns, the network updates, showing us how the brain might change if it was in a completely different anatomical structure. For more information and to RSVP to the free opening reception event please see the event's website above.