"Split <-> Second"~ Todd Siler’s Ninth Exhibition at the Feldman Gallery

New York, NY - Split <-> Second, Todd Siler’s ninth exhibition at the Feldman Gallery, includes paintings, sculptures, and drawings that take as their subject the processes of the brain and its connection with the physical laws of nature.   An artist with a background in brain science, Siler transforms the gallery space into an observatory for contemplating what our eyes may not see but our intuitions can sense: life-changing events happen in less than a split-second. This rapidly changing reality makes countless critical decisions increasingly difficult especially as we respond to global challenges that impact our present-future. On view May 14 through June 18th.

Abstract paintings interpret the fluid actions of neural tissue that has been greatly magnified – revealing a hidden world of biologically-driven feelings that form and influence the complexity of our lives every second.  Free-standing, seven-foot tall sculpted photographs, consisting of compressed and elongated metaphorical images, symbolize the 11-dimensional “strings” of matter that theoretically link everything in physical reality.

These evocative photosculptures make the unrolled, unfolded, and enlarged strings of mind visible in order to glimpse the natural forces that shape every aspect of our world and existence.

Siler’s collage drawings take us below the cerebral cortex into the wilds of the Limbic system and lower into the heart of the “interbrain” (diencephalon) and deeper, where visceral feelings, churning emotions, and involuntary actions can drive our actions into chaos in a matter of milliseconds; instantly turning them from rational to irrational, kindness to killing.  The drawings illuminate the uncertainty and unpredictability of synaptic flow, which controls our creativity, humanity, and civil society.

Split-second projections of subliminal images flash on the surfaces of various paintings.  The biological roots of impulses that ignite our most self-destructive tendencies are depicted by a listless rhinoceros, butting his head against a closed iron door, evoking Ionesco’s The Theater of the Absurd.  A wall-size mural repeats an endless pattern of dream-like, tessellated guns that target our desire for personal power.

In the face of its precarious future, Siler envisions the human race as the most endangered species, one that is propelled by its quest for power and love which race through our central nervous systems. He questions whether we can reverse the brain’s irrationalities and primal instincts, and wonders if we’ll be agile enough and wise enough to dodge nature’s demonstratively negative forces that can extinguish our dreams in a split<->second.

The Feldman Gallery has represented Todd Siler since 1981.  His work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.  His published works include Breaking the Mind Barrier (Simon & Schuster), Think Like a Genius (Bantam Books), and numerous articles in international art and science journals.  A Forum Fellow and presenter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Siler holds a number of patents on a wide range of inventions.  He received his PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies in Psychology and Art from MIT.

There will be a reception May 14, 6 - 8.  Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 - 6.  Monday by appointment.  For more information, contact Sarah Paulson at (212) 226-3232 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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New Illustrated Book Celebrates the World's Most Iconic Coca Cola

NEW YORK, NY- This illustrated book celebrates the world's most iconic beverage with the brand's photographs, advertisements, and designs as well as memories from film, social history, and pop culture. Decade by decade, Coca-Cola represents the zeitgeist with nostalgia and flair. For 125 years, Coca-Cola has connected with more people in more places than any other product the world has ever known. First sipped at an Atlanta soda fountain as a hot weather pick-me-up, Coca-Cola has triumphed by engaging people, one by one. The company’s long-time leader Robert Woodruff sought always to have it “within arm’s length of desire.”

He succeeded so well that Coca-Cola has become a part of our landscape, part of our rituals, part of our lives. This illustrated book celebrates the world’s most iconic beverage with the brand’s photographs, advertisements, and designs as well as memories from film, social history, and pop culture. Decade by decade, Coca-Cola represents the zeitgeist with nostalgia and flair.

Muhtar Kent is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of The Coca-Cola Company. Mr. Kent joined The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1978 and has held a variety of marketing and operations roles throughout his career.

"You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it." — Andy Warhol.

Order book here, available in May :  http://www.shopassouline.com/coca-cola.html

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CT Scans of Egyptian Mummy Help Vermont's Medical Examiner Solve Crimes

BURLINGTON, VT (AP).- A childhood fascination with archaeology and a chance encounter with a 2,700-year-old Egyptian mummy are helping Vermont doctors and law enforcement officials find truth in some of the most challenging of modern-day crimes: the unexplained deaths of young children. After spotting the mummy at the University of Vermont's Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Burlington, Dr. Jason Johnson, a radiology resident, arranged to have it put through his hospital's state-of-the-art CT scanner. He wanted to know about the life of what is believed to be the remains of an Egyptian servant girl of about 14 — and what led to her death.

What Johnson didn't expect was that some of the scientific techniques used to reveal the mummy's secrets would have other applications, including helping Vermont's medical examiner and prosecutors determine if children who die in infancy are the victims of crimes.

The hospital's CT scans helped doctors create a full-size, three-dimensional model of the mummy's skull — thanks to the latest technology and the sharp detail obtained by cranking up the power on the scanner to levels unsafe for living patients. That also helps in forensics by revealing patterns of injury in modern infant death cases that other scan techniques might miss.

"It made me feel good I came up with the protocol to work on the mummy," said Johnson, 31, a fifth-year radiology resident at Fletcher Allen Health Care, the teaching hospital at the University of Vermont. "I never sat up at night thinking, 'How can I save children from abuse?'"

Since the mummy was scanned in November, physicians working with the Vermont medical examiner's office have started using the techniques on infant deaths, which average about one a month.

"It was tremendously helpful," said Washington County State's Attorney Tom Kelly, who used the information gleaned from a CT in a recent case to help determine the age of the bone breaks in a young abuse victim. The case, completed before the mummy technique was developed, has not been discussed in open court so he couldn't give further details.

Johnson said that just as important as helping officials learn if a crime has been committed, the new techniques can help prove an infant's death was natural. "It's not always pattern of injuries that we find suggesting somebody did something wrong," Johnson said. "There could be findings that nothing wrong happened or the story fits. It's in the interest of truth."

Medical examiners across the country are turning more to CT scanners to complement traditional autopsies and X-rays, said Dr. Mary Ann Sens, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners and chair of the pathology department at the University of North Dakota's medical school.

"This got really wide acceptance in the United States in the last five to 10 years based on the work done at the Dover facility by the armed forces medical examiner," she said of the Delaware location where the remains of all deceased service members are processed after being brought back from overseas. And now it's being expanded to deceased children.

In North Dakota, Sens said, "We are just now starting to request on infants, children under 5, that a CT scan be done. It really does assist a great deal. It also allows a 3-D reconstruction so you can actually take off layers of the skin and graphically show where wounds are."

Vermont's chief medical examiner, Dr. Steven Shapiro, said he's been doing full-body CT scans of infants for two or three years. The new techniques developed for the mummy scan are just improving the process.

"Since the person is not living, you don't care about the radiation dose," said Fletcher Allen radiologist Dr. Christopher Filippi, who helped scan the mummy and develop the new techniques. He hopes to present a paper on the techniques at the fall meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. "Normally, in clinical scanning you have to worry about the patient. If the person is deceased or a mummy, you can take your time and get exquisite detail."

New CT technology is almost 1,000 times faster than 20 years ago, which also helps improve the ability to produce three-dimensional images, such as those used to create the model of the mummy's skull, said Dr. George Ebert, the chief of imaging technology at the Radiology Department at Fletcher Allen.

The Fleming Museum acquired the mummy in 1910 after George Perkins, the university's first curator of collections, bought it at a market in Cairo. The mummy is believed to be about 2,700 years old and to have come from the Nile Valley, about 350 miles south of Cairo, museum officials say. Since shortly after arriving in Burlington a century ago, the mummy has been displayed at the Fleming, just downhill from the medical complex now known as Fletcher Allen. It's still one of the museum's most popular attractions.

"It's not just a body. It's wrapped in linen. It's beautifully wrapped and then painted and then encased in a further decorated tomb," said Fleming Director Janie Cohen. And it was in the Fleming that Johnson first saw the mummy in the fall of 2009 when he was there to see a different exhibit.

Johnson grew up in Globe, Ariz., where a fifth-grade teacher helped instill in him a fascination with Egyptology, honed by watching "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with his father and learning about archaeological sites in his home state.

So he checked into the history of the Vermont mummy. It was X-rayed in 1937, but the relatively crude imagery available 74 years ago did little to tell the physicians who examined her much about her past. So he enlisted his colleagues and anthropologists at UVM and elsewhere to undertake their own mummy project.

Early one morning last fall, Johnson and museum staff took the mummy out of its glass display case, protected it in bubble wrap and trundled it the quarter-mile from the museum to the radiology department. They rolled it into a state-of-the-art machine and spent an hour scanning it from every angle. The doctors came away with about 10,000 images, some with a resolution of about one-hundredth of an inch.

A skull fracture above the right ear stood out. The injury would have been enough to kill her, but no one could say whether it happened before she died or after. There was a cyst above one tooth, and the scans showed that the Egyptian embalmers removed the girl's brain through the base of her skull rather than the more common method of extracting it through the nose.

The mummy is back in its museum case and the Fleming staff is planning to build a new exhibit with the information gleaned from the scan, including CT images and the 3-D reconstruction of the girl's skull. What they didn't know was that those same imaging techniques would help play a role in modern forensic medicine.

"That's what science is all about," said Sens, the North Dakota pathologist. "Every person's death can mean something. When we examine it carefully it benefits society, it benefits the family and ultimately it benefits everyone."

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

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Delhi Art Gallery Shows 75 Works by Significant Indian Artists of the 20th Century

NEW DELHI.- "Manifestations V", an exhibition of 75 works by significant Indian artists of the 20th century, is part of Delhi Art Gallery’s biannual series introduced to fulfill the need to present an edited slice from its collection. Its format consists of a single work of each chosen artist which is carefully examined within the unique experiences of his artistic journey. What is exciting is the freedom to select artworks without constraints of chronology, style or subject. On view through June 18th.

Such a vast survey of artists and time spans has been possible because of the artworks collected over the years which, by intent, are not restricted to the few who have been well documented in Indian art history. These selected works exude both tremendous energy and strife as well as communicate the temper of the time. At the same time they are a representation of the vast firmament of art that was created in the last century, some of it celebrated and some, at least till recently, unsung but no less important for it.

Manifestations V includes works that cut across histories and geographies, mediums and materials, to represent a slice of the best in Indian modern art. It contains some massive-sized canvases (and others that can best be described as minuscule) as well as sculptures. Scholars and art-historians have documented these works at some length, describing each work for its uniqueness. The result is a range of artistic interpretations that examine conflicting ideologies and purposes, experiments in materials and mediums: all making us aware of the constant shifts and changes that art undergoes as artists take on fresh challenges and risks.

Delhi Art Gallery was established in 1993, and has since grown to become a premier institution for art. It boasts of a distinctive collection of early-modern as well as modern and contemporary art, ranging from names such as Rabindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose to F. N. Souza, M. F. Husain and S. H. Raza, from Avinash Chandra and G. R. Santhosh to Sohan Qadri and Gogi Saroj Pal, from Chittaprosad to Haren Das, among the over 400 artists in its inventory.

Delhi Art Gallery brings a basket of unmatched services that can take your art collection to a new level. These services will help you not only build collections, evaluate works or authenticate them but also preserve such collections by creating aesthetic and protective displays. These collections can also be professionally documented. So you can pursue your passion without apprehensions. DAG's offers a wide range of services from which clients can meet their individual needs and interests. Visit : http://www.delhiartgallery.com/

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Phillips de Pury & Co. Features Highlights from NYC Contemporary May Sales

NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips de Pury & Company announced the highlights from the May Contemporary Art Part I and Contemporary Art Part II sales. The sales will feature important and iconic modern and contemporary works. Contemporary Art Part I includes 51 lots with a pre-sale estimate of $84,970,000 to $120,500,000. Contemporary Art Part II includes 308 lots with a pre-sale estimate of $8,467,000 to $12,153,000.

Contemporary Art Part I
"The quality selection of the May auction reflects the discerning standards that the contemporary market demands. With top works across the entire spectrum of mid-century through cutting edge art, we have high expectations for global competition and record prices." Michael McGinnis, Senior Director and Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art.

Andy Warhol’s, Liz #5, 1963 is a rare and exquisite example of the world renowned images of feminine paragons of grace that catapulted the artist to prominence nearly 50 years ago. This glamorous portrait of the legendary actress, Elizabeth Taylor, embodies the most important themes of Warhol’s oeuvre including his fascination with celebrity, real-life drama and the fleeting nature of beauty. One of the artists most instantly recognized images, Liz #5 is a testament to Warhol’s unique and unrivaled contribution to the visual arts. Coming from an important private collection, the work was acquired from the estate of Warhol’s long-timed dealer and collector Ileana Sonnabend, where it remained in her personal art collection until her death. This is the first time a major work from her estate will come to auction and it offers the once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire a true Warhol masterpiece and one of the Sonnabend treasures in the open market.

Roy Lichtenstein’s, Still life with Mirror, 1972 estimated at $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 illustrates Lichtenstein’s inspiration from all forms of mass produced printed material rendered in a flat, two dimensional painting paradoxically reaching three-dimensional status. Still life with Mirror is a seminal work from an important period of Lichtenstein’s career incorporating many of his earlier works that function as an extension of the multi-tiered formal dialogue that he had been engaging in with his artistic forebears’ well-known interiors such as Matisse and Abraham van Beryeren. This work is a deceptively simple interior scene composed of a table on which a bowl of fruit, a coffee cup and the verso of a painting sit, construing a foreground. Reduced to elemental shape, three primary colors of the high modernism of Mondrian are exercised in support of a representational scene that is undermined by it’s own flatness. This work exemplifies Lichtenstein’s incomparable contribution to the visual arts.

Additional notable highlights include Third Eye, 1985 by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat estimated at $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 and Mao (Mao 10), 1973 by Andy Warhol estimated at $3,500,000 to $4,500,000.

Contemporary Art Part II
“This season begins an exciting run for contemporary art. We are pleased to present top works that are fresh to the market, from private collections all over the world. The selection is wide-ranging and dynamic.” Sarah Mudge, Head of Contemporary Art Part II.

John Wesley’s, 3 Sunbathers, 1982 estimated at $250,000 to $350,000 echoes the historical phenomenon of the reclining nude that has been recognized throughout history as the most iconic representation of the female form in an exciting and modern way. Wesley’s animated style and bold use of color confronts the allegory of the nude with vitality and good humor, a prime example of Wesley’s painterly abstractions.


Roy Lichtenstein’s, New Born, 1988 estimated at $300,000 - $500,000 is titled and modeled after Constainti Brancusi’s bronze modernist gem Le Nouveau-né (the Newborn), 1920, part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. Lichtenstein’s recall and response to Brancusi’s graceful, deceptively effortless sculpture of abstraction and form goes one step further in expressing the artist’s interest in the relationship between three dimensional form and two-dimensional space. Lichtenstein’s Newborn identifies with the artist’s fundamental issue of representing a figure in abstract means. Newborn is an exquisite representation of its time and place within art history, and an iconic work from one of Pop Art’s best artists.

Vik Muniz’s, iconic portrait of Elizabeth Taylor (from the Pictures of Diamonds series), 2004, estimated at $80,000 to $120,000, is a dazzling portrait of the late Hollywood dame. Muniz knew Taylor would make the perfect subject to be rendered entirely out of precious stones. This work was a gift from the artist to Elizabeth Taylor directly. Following the death of its beloved subject, the portrait’s provenance continues to find its way towards one of the star’s many dedicated devotees.

Additional highlights include Matthias Weischer, Untitled, 2003 estimated at $250,000 - $350,000; Mark Bradford, Am I losing you …, 2002 estimated at $250,000 - $350,000; and Robert Ryman, Place VI, 1998 estimated at $120,000 - $180,000.

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