Examining Consequences of Medical Advances

“Bioethics: Thresholds of Corporal Completeness,” a timely group show curated by artist Deborah Edwards at Side Street Projects, probes such hot-button issues as reproductive rights, human cloning, biological warfare and genetic testing. The artists in this exhibition suggest that, with every biomedical leap forward, the individual’s ethical and emotional burdens grow heavier.

Ruth Katz, Aline Mare, Lisa Schoyer and Erika Rothenberg convey a sense of bemusement at the tangled web of choices brought about by advances in reproductive technologies and genetic engineering. Katz takes large-scale color photographs of a woman contemplating a range of contraceptive devices; Mare digitally alters the embryonic photographs used by anti-abortion activists; Schoyer displays medical charts and documentation relating to her son’s rare genetic disorder; and Rothenberg’s witty text and photo piece relates a cheerfully narcissistic fantasy about raising a cloned daughter.

Joy Garnet’s blurry paintings of X-ray images invest a cold and “objective” science with emotional content, while Nora Murphy’s soggy birthday cake painting evokes the gravitational pull of decomposing flesh. Philip Riley, Hilary Lorenz and Susan Rankaitis use digital and experimental forms of photography to depict microbes and DNA strands; David Kremers “grows” an abstract painting by placing bacteria that is genetically engineered to produce various colored enzymes onto an acrylic plate; and Martin Betz, Mike McMillin and Endi Poskovic address issues relating to eugenics and ethnic cleansing.

The show’s standout works include Dinh Q. Le’s heartbreaking--and horrifying--”Damaged Gene,” composed of a videotape and several relics from an August public art project in which Le opened a store in Ho Chi Minh City that sold toys and clothing for conjoined twins and children born with Agent Orange-related birth defects; Lisa Stanley’s richly detailed Plexiglas dollhouse, each room a different stage of life mediated by medical technology; and Ken Gonzales-Day’s ominous, strangely seductive digital photographs of skin lesions and dermatological growths.

* Side Street Projects, 1629 18th St., #2, Santa Monica, (310) 829-0779, through Dec. 19. Closed Sunday-Tuesday.

Leafing Through: At DiRT Gallery, Alison Foshee takes inconsequential objects and transforms them into synthetic nature specimens that she groups, labels, mounts and displays in glass frames. Known as a printmaker, Foshee is now creating three-dimensional works on paper that bedevil traditional distinctions between media. She glues fake fingernails together to form seashells, painstakingly “draws” maple and fig leaves using tiny metal staples, and uses polymer clay to sculpt a series of designer tongues that look like the wings of bugs and butterflies.

Foshee’s leaf studies are made entirely by hand, without the use of a stapler. Foshee pokes each individual staple through a sheet of paper and into a foam core backing, layering the staples over certain portions of the leaf to create veins that spread across its surface like outstretched fingers.

Elsewhere, three boxes display rows of colorful clay tongues that give new meaning to the term “speech patterns.” Each is uniquely suited to the particular type of utterance it represents; a pale green tongue with tiny, white, footprint-shaped splotches is a Susurrus Suavis, or “enticing whisper,” while a cherry-red one emblazoned with a small brown starfish pattern represents a “passionate scream.”

Best of all are Foshee’s delicate, rainbow-hued fingernail seashells, which from a slight distance look remarkably similar to their organic counterparts. Foshee applies several coats of nail polish to the inside of each long plastic talon, then glues them together to form a series of linked plates shaped like the shells of mollusks, oysters, conches and other sea creatures. By giving them names like Galae venera (“Venus’ helmet”) or Ancilis venerius (“Venus’ sacred shield”), Foshee transforms decorative accouterments of vain ineffectuality into enduring emblems of strength that are worthy of the late track star Florence Griffith Joyner.

* DiRT Gallery, 7906 Santa Monica Blvd., #218, Hollywood, (323) 822-9359. Through Jan. 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays.