"What at last, of the patterns of body plans, which stimulated Turing in the first place?" --Philip Ball, Editor at Nature

Universal Concepts Unlimited announces the opening of an exhibition of recent sculpture and works on paper by Suzanne Anker on view from April 11th through May 18th.

The Butterfly in the Brain continues Anker's investigation into the visualizing techniques available through high technology simulation: the microscope, the telescope, the MRI scan. The exhibition focuses on a dialogue of signs within the symmetrical (or virtually symmetrical) structures of chromosomes, the butterfly and the brain, all of which possess an axis copy. Through pictorial substitution, demarcation, and relocation Anker creates a body of work out of science-based data.

MRI scans are transposed into butterfly wings showing a comparison between genetic patterns in nature and advanced imaging technologies. Like constellations in the sky, butterfly shapes may be found in neurological maps as well as charts of urban sprawl. From emergent visual correspondence to overlapping resemblance, images evolve and are transformed by Anker's eccentric working methods. Engram for example, a set of inkjet prints in twelve parts is entirely composed of appropriated brain diagrams. By superimposing multiple images on top of one another, an array of icons appear: ET, Buddha, a heart, a yogi, a sexual orifice, etc.

The exhibition, mostly in black and white, continues Ms. Anker's use of digital and optical technologies and scientific iconography to expose hidden connections between nature and culture.

Suzanne Anker's optical installation Zoosemiotics was part of Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen at the J.Paul Getty Museum of Art, November, 2001-Februrary, 2002. Her forthcoming book (with Dorothy Nelkin) entitled The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age will be published by Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory Press in 2003.

For further information contact UCU @ 212.727.7575

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