Artist Ellen Levy presented a slide show on Tuesday as a closure to her exhibit in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. A part of the Samuel L. Silipo ’85 Distinguished Visitor lecture series, Levy discussed her ongoing career as an artist who has embraced science as a creative source.

With an audience of about 20 students, Zilkha Gallery curator Nina Felshin opened the informal slide presentation. According to Levy, Felshin organized the display in the gallery in conjunction with the Liz Lerman dance performance that took place earlier this winter.

Levy’s work has long been prominent within the scientific art community. She is a part of a “cultural revolution,” as she calls it. With the current advances in genomic technologies and biotechnology, Levy and her contemporaries are taking Darwinian evolution to the next level. She highlights the tensions brought to society by this new turn in the evolution of man’s tools in her work.

Levy said she also wishes to spark a dialogue between artists and scientists with her provocative paintings.

“Her work amazes me because I know of very few artists who engage with science and technology as directly as she does,” said Heather Craig ’06. “In some of the paintings she showed, she incorporated classic scientific images that most people would immediately recognize.”

Levy’s talk was biographical in structure, starting with her initial interest in observatories and ending with an explanation of her current display.

“[It’s much] clearer looking back than looking to the future,” Levy said.

Levy’s career path has been astounding, having displayed her work in the United States, Europe and Israel. In the early 1980’s she was invited to view a Space Shuttle Launch at NASA’s base in Florida. Currently, she is the president of the College Art Association in New York, and a professor at Brooklyn College, and ten years ago she compiled an issue of Art Journal on the theme of “Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code.”

Her current show, “Ellen K. Levy: evolutionn,” displays multi-media works focusing on genetic, oil, nuclear, and space patents. Levy said that the reason she chose most of the patents was their portrayal of the current clash of ethical, economical and medical goals of society. The work is built up through compilations of scanned drawings, paintings, and photographs. On top of this is textured oil paint and even electrical tape. Levy said that she tends to use “perspectival ambiguities” and “thrusting diagonal space.”

With her sense of humor, Levy highlights the most ridiculous patents possible: “Approaches and methods for indication and movement of stimulated emotional levels;” “Equipment and methods to induce lucid dreams in sleeping persons;” and, as Levy chuckled about global warming and melting ice caps, “Disposal of radiation waste in glacial ice.”

The presentation was accompanied with slides for only the first half of the talk, due to technical difficulties.

“It’s a catastrophic failure,” the technician called out from the back of the room.

“That’s technology for you,” replied Levy, chuckling.

Many different themes pervade Levy’s paintings and collages. Some of her work acts as a “wonder cabinet,” eroding the borders between the natural and inorganic. One will find the end of a plier next to a bird beak, an astronaut next to a totem pole, the tusks of an elephant painted in the same way as the propellers of a plane. One painting displayed at the presentation had a genealogy of dog breeds side by side with a genealogy of different-sized paper clips.

Levy said she is also drawn to the awe-inspiring nature of science.

“I depict the attractive qualities of lethal things, things that threaten survival,” she said. “Art has in the past reflected a fear [of science, but] knowledgeable artists should find [science] creatively stimulating and encouraging.”

According to Levy, it is becoming more common for artists to be interested in the world of science. She gave credit to the Human Genome Project, released to the public in 2000, as an eye-opener for the world.