Contact:
Virgil Wong
Artist and Executive Director
PaperVeins Museum of Art
info@paperveins.org
http://www.paperveins.org
New York, NY (August 1, 2000) – It's the Biennial's Opening Gala and a guy named Secret Agent Gel slaps an electrode helmet onto your head and starts spinning some funky tunes directly from your own brain waves. Discombobulated, you stagger over to the sleek-looking "GenoChoice" kiosk, and before you realize it, you're scanning in all 3 billion base pairs of your genome. And say, did Mr. Lee Mingwei – the first human male to become pregnant – just walk by?
You've entered PaperVeins Biennial 2000. This provocative gallery exhibition and one-month arts festival opens on September 7th at the HERE Arts Center in SoHo and will run until October 14th.
PaperVeins artist and executive director Virgil Wong states,"I'm extremely pleased with the caliber and inventiveness of the artists participating in this year's Biennial. This show is a truly organic, interactive, and eye-opening experience for the unsuspecting visitor."
Other features of the gallery exhibition include the unnerving and uncontrollable Smart Child digital installation by Eric Wielosinski, a teacher at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the beautifully modular and narrative paintings of Metropolitan Museum of Art lecturer William Crow.
Special events throughout the exhibition include multimedia panel discussions with the artists, theatrical and dance performances, and a stunning 16mm film screening by MIX Festival co-founder Jim Hubbard (who is also curating a highly-anticipated series of films on AIDS this Fall at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). There is even an Apollo Theater-styled Web Site Slam Contest, hosted by About.com's Philip Kain (named "The Funniest Gay or Lesbian in New York"), where only the most stalwart web artist will survive.
The PaperVeins Museum of Art is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and curating innovative art work about medicine, technology, and the human body. PaperVeins showcases outstanding net.art work via its award-winning virtual museum web site. Its on-going efforts and accomplishments culminate in yearly gallery exhibitions and special events at various arts venues throughout New York City. PaperVeins was founded in 1995 by Virgil Wong and has produced outstanding art shows at venues throughout New York including Gallery 128, Galapagos, The Knitting Factory, Collective:Unconscious, and ABC No Rio.
For more information, log-on to the Biennial web site at http://www.biennial.org, and visit the PaperVeins Museum of Art online at http://www.paperveins.org.
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