In honor of the new season at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Paola Antonelli will discuss an all new exhibition “Sleuthing the Mind” with Pratt Curator and moderator Ellen K. Levy on Wednesday, October 8.
Paola Antonelli
Sleuthing the Mind, which opens to the public on Wednesday, September 17, is a cutting-edge exhibition that explores the intersection between art and neuroscience through video, performance, human-computer interface, virtual reality, and more traditional artistic approaches that both highlight and unravel the mysteries of the mind.
“Sleuthing the Mind operates in the space between a thematic exhibition and an experiment, and analyzes how both new and traditional media may induce new experiences by directing our attention, emotion and memory,” said Levy. “The exhibition invites viewers to engage with art that provides insights into how the mind works.”
Robert Buck, Untitled ("Children’s Drawings as Diagnostic Aids" by Joseph H. Di Leo, M.D./ "Art as Healing" by Edward Adamson), 2007, charcoal, colored pencil, conté crayon, graphite, ink, latent fingerprint powder, and tape on paper, 10 3/8 x 8 inches. Photo: courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, New York
The exhibition features work by 20 local and international artists, and the opening night reception on Tuesday, September 16, will include a live performance by George Quasha and Charles Stein that plays with the viewer’s perception of language and cognition.
According to Levy, the art in Sleuthing the Mind draws from significant neuroscience research on consciousness, attention, memory and empathy. Participating artists have either directly collaborated with neuroscientists, taken inspiration from neuroscience writing and experiments, or have been trained in related fields.
Researchers and artists Suzanne Dikker and Matthias Oostrik have created a video work that references Marina Abramović’s “The Artist is Present” performance piece and visualizes moments of synchronicity between two people’s brainwaves.
Media artist Jim Campbell, whose work layers each frame from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho into a single image that contains all of the film’s visual data, was educated as an engineer.
Jill Scott, whose work was informed by the research of scientist Paul Bach-y-Rita on sensory substitution, created a sculpture inspired by the molecular structure of tissue specimens during an artistic residency at the Institute of Molecular Life Sciences at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Artist Jennifer Bornstein‘s film was influenced by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran’s brain-rewiring approach to treating amputees with “phantom” limb pain.
Gregory Garvey, screen grab from The Split-Brain (Dichoptic) Interface: Thomas v. Hill, 1999/2014, computer based stereoscopic display, 30 x 36 x 64 inches
Additional participating artists include Susan Aldworth, Hans Breder, Robert Buck, Nene Humphrey, Michael E. Goldberg, Mike Metz, Warren Neidich, Patricia Olynyk, Nicole Ottiger and Jane Philbrick.
Throughout the 2014-2015 season, Pratt will also debut the following exhibitions:
"Mapping Slow Design: Topics, Tools, and Traces," runs from December 3 to February 7, 2015. Presented in collaboration with design research center slowLab, and curated by its director Carolyn Strauss and artist Ana Paula Pais, this exhibition explores the “Slow Design” movement, which promotes sustainable design that balances needs of the individual, society and the environment.
"Martha Wilson’s Franklin Furnace," runs from February 20, 2015 to April 30, 2015. This retrospective exhibition will feature live performance art and archival materials from pioneering performance art space Franklin Furnace, including correspondence, photographs, press releases, posters, drawings and more. The space, which has been championing avant-garde art forms for 38 years, has had a lasting impact on the careers of artists including Eric Bogosian, Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger.
The Pratt Manhattan Gallery is located at 144 West 14th Street on the second floor. Gallery Hours are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.
