CEPA Review aka "I don't think they could have made this creepier if they tried."

This week, our assignment was the visit the CEPA Gallery downtown. Now, maybe it was because our subway car had a few issues getting there, or because the Market Arcade kind of looks like a scene from a Hitchcock film, but Jill and I were already apprehensive when we got to the gallery. First of all, the way the space is set up is completely disjointed - there is no flow at all between galleries, and while in this case none of them had similar subject matter, I can see this being a real problem if CEPA decided to show a single artist's work on all three floors.

The exhibit at CEPA right now is entitled "Trans-Evolution, Examining Bio Art." It sounded really cool to me at first, and I was curious to see how these three artists mingled science in their art. The first gallery we went into was Paul Vanouse's "Latent Figure Protocol," which shows manipulated DNA samples on looping video. I thought it was funny that they were able to make certain shapes with the seemingly glow-in-the-dark samples (such as the letters "ID" and the form of a skull and crossbones), but I think I would have appreciated and liked the exhibit much more if it had provided visitors with more comprehensive information about the experiment that was taking place (such as how it was done). While I don't claim to understand complex science, I would have liked to have been given the opportunity to really understand what was going on.

Okay, the basement. First of all, if Jill hadn't come with me, I seriously don't think I would have gone in. After going through a couple empty, dark spaces to find the entrance to the exhibit, you have to be "buzzed" in. The door shuts behind you with a distinct note of finality, and you find yourself in an even darker space, lit only by red fluorescent lights in two glass cases in front of you. One step further and you realize that the many things in the glass cases are taxidermied animals, including a rabbit, several frogs, and a snake. Creepy. Especially when you don't like snakes. Then, you see on the other half of the room, there is another experiment going on. There is a dark glass case which you can kind of make out a small science experiment, and something in one of the bulbs, but you have no idea what. Cue the video, which shows a woman scraping and cutting her own skin so she can manipulate the stem cells to grow new living tissue. In theory, fine. Then manipulating the new tissue into the shape of a coat? I mean, I understand that if you *can* do something, you might as well, but I felt like this was a little unprofessional, not to mention creepy. A closer look at that dark glass bulb showed the "skin coat" as it was dubbed by us, and once it started dripping, we were out of there.

The last exhibit on the third floor was done by Elizabeth Demary, and was entitled "Corpor Esurit, or we all deserve a break today." Basically, she had a very large ant farm, and fed the ants *only* McDonald's food for a month. I actually might have found this semi-interesting if it was in a science museum (and that actually goes for the other two shows as well), but I just couldn't really accept it in an "art" gallery. Over all, I was unimpressed by the exhibits and CEPA in general. I'd like to go back when there is an actual photography exhibit going on.