Cirque de Médecine
The 2002 PaperVeins Museum of Art Biennial Exhibition

CURATOR'S STATEMENT
Virgil Wong, PaperVeins Museum of Art

Cirque de Médecine is a challenge to the conventional representations of bioethics and contemporary medicine offered by both medical institutions and the media. This show presents revealing and often whimsical points of view that peer deep into the ivory tower of medicine and re-examines how we look at the human body. Science fact and fiction intertwine in this exhibition, and our bodies become complex vessels not only of cells, tissues, organs, and systems — but also of limitless permutations and transfigurations.

The origins of Cirque de Médecine trace back to 1995 when I spent a year dissecting and drawing cadavers at the University of Rome Medical School. At the time, my intent was simply to improve my figurative work in painting and sculpture by thoroughly investigating the human form from the inside. Spending hours each day with dead Italians, however, triggered an acute awareness of mortality and sparked endless questions on the relationship between corporeality and consciousness.

Years later, I encountered Meryl Levin's Anatomy of Anatomy photographs, which depicted medical students in their first gross anatomy class at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. These images became the cornerstone for Cirque de Médecine when I wrote Levin the following e-mail:

Thematically, I'm hoping to present your images from a voyeuristic context, connotative of the anatomical theater. I had spent several weeks at the University of Bologna where — as you may know — some of the earliest documented medical dissections had taken place. Due to the religious consternation of cutting up dead bodies at the time, the physical space was extremely discreet and actually resembled a modern day peep show. I read several first-hand accounts of how students traveled deep into the cavernous space, peered into the dissection area through small eye-holes, and

saw the human body from the inside so intimately for the very first time. I thought your photographs captured this same sense of wonderment. This moment of discovery and marginal disbelief —— at something so familiar yet so strange — is exactly what I'm hoping to encapsulate with this exhibition. The show will be a medical circus with revelatory images, films, and installations about the body within the unique confines of the medical world.

Kevin Kleine's hyperrealist paintings of injuries and surgical procedures became a natural partner to Levin's work, and I soon discovered several outstanding films that gave a poetic voice to radiographic diagnostic imaging. This included works by Tina Gonsalves and Nando Costa, which are featured in this exhibition.

CB Cooke's video installation, charlie and cb, serves another important function in the show. Cooke reclaims the personal identity of a patient, which is easily eclipsed in a Hospital environment where individuals are often referred to by their disease. In this particular case, Cooke's father was suffering from cancer and the resulting work is a powerful homage to one man's life as both a parent and a prolific artist. Through the use of thousands of still photographs taken during his father's ultimately terminal disease, Cooke captures the unbridled vitality of an individual even when his body becomes completely debilitated.

Contemporary medicine simultaneously pulls our bodies in remarkably pliant directions while still caging us into very specific limitations. Marcus Pinto's photographs show bodies so distorted by fun-house mirrors that even the gender of his subjects is almost indiscernible. On the other hand, Jonathan Schipper's Invisible Jet seals the artist's own body into a suffocating tight plastic enclosure. Both of these works strike me as interesting counterpoints in looking at the physical barriers of the human body and how they can both open up and encapsulate the fluid nature of our corporeal identities.

Eric Wielosinski's GASP installation reinforces the respiratory suspension of the show by literally depicting children on video holding their breath until a viewer moves away. Andrea Kleine's Occluding Tent pulls visitors back into the exhibition by probing deep into their subconscious and projecting the resulting images for everyone to see.

Another universe invisible to the naked eye, the microscopic world, is brought to light in Mike Sachs' Le cirque miniscule magnifique. Using advanced 3-D modeling technologies, Sachs has created a modern day flea circus where nanobots lift glucose molecules and battle devastating viruses — all ostensibly from the petri dish and microscope positioned in the gallery. Sachs work is a prescient illustration of clinical procedures that will very likely exist in the foreseeable future.

My on-going art project with Lee Mingwei, POP! The First Human Male Pregnancy, is another example of art anticipating an impending medical scenario. Reproductive medicine is at the forefront of bioethical concerns today, and the possibility of pregnant men opens up an intriguing dialogue on gender roles, infertility treatments, and media representation of medical science.

Clyven: The First Transgenic Mouse with Human Intelligence is a more playful extrapolation of what stem cell research may someday yield. Sentient rodents may not provoke the same outrage as male pregnancy and designer babies (see one of my related projects, www.GenoChoice.com), but they provide an interesting context to explore the limits of believability and narrative fiction within ostensibly legitimate medical sources.

The exhibition even adopts standard medical environments to create a more theatrical space in which to offer these critical perspectives. The gallery is divided into a research lab (Clyven), a nursery (Male Pregnancy), a Hospital ward (charlie and cb), and even a morgue (Anatomy on Anatomy).

The PaperVeins Museum of Art has produced almost a decade of outstanding exhibitions and arts programming both online and in various New York City galleries. Our singular focus has been to support engaging works about the human body, science, and society. Cirque de Médecine is the latest example of our efforts to build upon the rich history of art and anatomy to produce innovative projects that hopefully provoke, excite, and enrich our audience.

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The 2002 PaperVeins Biennial was curated by 2001 NEA grant recipient Virgil Wong — who also screened his film at this year's Sundance Film Festival and has exhibited work in museums, galleries, and theaters around the world. Virgil also spent a year drawing and dissecting cadavers at the University of Rome Medical School, and he currently heads the Web Design and Development Team for Weill Medical College of Cornell University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. For more information about Mr. Wong, please visit: http://www.virgilwong.com

The PaperVeins Museum of Art has produced almost a decade of outstanding exhibitions and arts programming both online and in various New York City galleries. Encyclopedia Britannica rated PaperVeins with four stars and included the Museum's site as one of the Web's all-time best. The Museum also received the Gold INVISION Award from NewMedia Magazine last year. PaperVeins is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, artist-run organization in the State of New York. Please visit the Museum online at: http://www.paperveins.org

HEREart is funded in part by public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support for PaperVeins has been received from Art of Franza, Inc.