Valerie Beller
at Nomad Central, September 7-10
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During the opening weekend of the River North gallery season I discovered three abstract artists who incorporate images of the double helix in their work. Because my day job is editing manuscripts for the American Journal of Human Genetics, I paid attention, noticing especially how these artists seemed happily unaware of the debates over funding for the Human Genome Project, the ethical issues related to genetic engineering, and the elaborate, laborious procedures that advance this science, though journalists often suggest that progress is made at a terrific speed. My personal associations with the double helix notwithstanding, the structure is undeniably beautiful and undeniably evocative of certain social issues. An organic phenomenon like a flower or a spiderweb can inspire an artist without carrying much cultural baggage, but paintings of the double helix cannot harness the power of the image without calling up the debate over whether DNA represents a scientific sham paraded before the O.J. jurors, a potential threat, or another way of spelling God. The great thing about art is that it can evoke without having to take a stand.
Her affinity for the botanical and zoological comes through in her paintings, but not in any programmatic fashion. In fact, the double helix I perceived in the painting called Arabesque was intended to evoke the ballet position and classic design element as much as the structure of DNA. It is surrounded by smaller calligraphic knots that almost but don’t quite match the double helical form: to me these suggested protein molecules in the primordial ooze that didn’t get hit by lightning and therefore didn’t start replicating and evolving.
What brings these disparate elements together is the fact that they all refer to the artist’s identity: the colors signify her Lithuanian heritage, and the titles express her love of jazz. Made during a personal crisis, the series helped Loftus address life rather than sink into despair. “The deeper I went within myself, the more at peace I could be with the rest of the world,” she says. Though in an interview she cautions that genetic technology can be put to harmful as well as beneficial uses, the depth of her understanding of and identification with genetic concepts is remarkable. I can’t imagine the same thing happening with symbols drawn from computer science, say, or astrophysics, perhaps because artists share with geneticists a preoccupation with identity and, ultimately, with the forces of life itself.
