Progress requires reconciliation between the known and the new. The twenty-first century challenges us to integrate ever-accelerating technology and its unpredictable effects into everyday life. Today's dominant sciences - genetic mapping and engineering, new physics, and computer science - unleash constantly expanding new "files" of information. The reality and potential of such data leads us into new territories of practical and philosophical inquiry. We struggle to understand and reconcile the myriad implications of virtual reality, cloning, artificial intelligence, gene therapy, and chaos theory. In New Files, New Territories, Sarah Walker, Sharon Engelstein, Frank Davi Jr., and Breon Dunigan offer visceral visual responses to the files of rational information that fill our world.

Sarah Walker's large paintings are both macro and micro perspectives. Clustering circles, strands, stars, and nodes within a stratified composition are at once galaxies and cellular cross-sections. Dense layers, rich colors, and an abundance of forms require time to process visually and metaphorically. Ambiguous, Walker's spaces suggest the neurobiology that launches mental processes (and, by extension, rational thought) as well as the networks that fuel artificial intelligence and cyber communities. These works translate the complex intersection of science and spirituality into the very human and personal realms of painting and looking.

Sharon Engelstein comments on technology by applying it to create bulbous biomorphic forms. Using computer-aided design (CAD) she is able to digitally design forms which are then executed via computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). The abstracted, minimal sculptures and their perfect finish belie the industrial process from which they are born, yet they are also very life-like. In creating pet prototypes, the Stray Pups series looks at human emotional desire for companionship and control. They are pared down to the idealized domesticated animal--cute, lap-size, roly-poly body with head and tail, but no legs. These humorous creatures seamlessly reflect the personal needs and the technological ambitions of the human psyche.

Frank Davi Jr. (a.k.a. HYPOlite) infuses his candy-surfaced paintings with Lego iconography and surrounds them with floating sculptured pods. The acidic, plastic palette and toy-like appendages playfully buoy the works in a sea of technofuturism. The building blocks recall both childhood and DNA, an ironic juxtaposition of humanity with hard science. The push of two dimensions into three suggests theory and fantasy bursting into reality.

The sculptures of Breon Dunigan are all about contrast. Found objects such as detailed cast iron stove legs and lamp parts anchor smooth and minimal biomorphic forms. The whimsical, futuristic shapes sit (or levitate) atop their functional, old-fashioned bases. The visual and conceptual tension is apt metaphor for the cohabitation and reconciliation between generations, both genealogic and scientific.

Sharon Engelstein
Wit
from the "Stray Pups" series
rapid prototype heat
fused plastic
6 x 9 x 7 in.

Frank Davi Jr.
Grenouilles HYPOlite
2002 acrylic, resin on wood
20 x 20 in.

Sarah Walker
Descending Order XII
2000 acrylic
50 x 38 in.

Breon Dunigan
Mother and Daughter
2002 hydrocal, metal
18 x 16 x 10 in.