Ellen K. Levy

"Enhanced Communications," 2007
Mixed media and print on wood   
36" x 24"
Courtesy of the artist and Michael Steinberg Fine Art
Estimated value:$6500
Starting bid: $3000

Ellen K. Levy is an artist and a teacher who was past president of the College Art Association. She has taught courses on art and science interrelationships at Cooper Union, School of Visual Arts and Brooklyn College. She has explored how artists are responding to genetics and genetic coding. In 1989 she received an art commission from NASA after exhibiting at both the New York Academic of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. In 1999 she was a Visiting Fellow of the Arts and Sciences at Skidmore College, funded by the Luce Foundation. She was also a recipient of an AICA International Art Critics )award in 1996. In the past few years Levy has had solo exhibitions at the Michael Steinberg Fine Arts in New York City, which represents her work,and at the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University. Her work was also included in the second Moscow Biennale in an exhibition "Petroliana" curated by Elena Sorokina. The exhibition at Rider will focus on works from the past and work from Red can be Blue and Three-Card Monte. In all these mixed media works she casts a critical eye on the industrialized world along with its drive for economic globalization.

Artist statement:

"In my art I explore complex relationships between nature and culture by building a dialogue between the handmade and the technological. I draw inspiration from a range of inventions, including plans to generate unseen forces of energy or to shape living matter. I initially select images and text of patented inventions from digital archives that highlight the convergence of economic and political interests. I alter these minimal black-and-white diagrams through re-drafting and computer programs. Then I cut, displace, glue, and paint over the printed paper surface, engaging the materials and underlying wood support as significant visual components. I paint new images over the surface, taking cues from the inventors' descriptions and titles. In so doing, each public document becomes a unique work of art "