Michael Steinberg Fine Art is honored to present Ellen K. Levy’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, Stealing Attention, opening on Thursday, March 19th.

Stealing Attention asks each visitor, “How can we not see something even when it is staring us in the face?” A randomized animation sets the theme for an installation of panel paintings and works on paper that examines the critical issue of where we cast our attention and the consequences of that decision. The Flash animation is the product of collaboration between the artist and neuroscientist Michael E. Goldberg, Director of the Mahoney Center for Brain and Behavior, Columbia University. To highlight the fact that visual selection always comes with a cost, Levy references the con game, 3-Card Monte, and one negative consequence of the war in Iraq, the looting of relics from national museums. This tight installation could be easily re-configured to refer to other disasters that transpire over time, such as global warming.

Ellen K. Levy, a New York-based artist and teacher, is Past President of the College Art Association (2004-2006). She has exhibited her work widely, both in the US and abroad. Levy received an arts commission from NASA (1985), was a co-recipient of an AICA award for Emerging Artists (1995-1996), and was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Arts and Sciences at Skidmore College (1999), a position funded by the Luce Foundation. In 2007, her work was included in the 2nd Moscow Biennale and in “Weather Report” at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Lucy Lippard. Her long-standing involvement in the science of complex systems is seen in her art and publications. She has taught art and science at Cooper Union and at Brooklyn College, is currently a Visiting Scholar at NYU, and she is enrolled in Z-Node, a practice-based doctoral program for artists involved with science and technology. Her exhibition at Michael Steinberg Fine Art overlaps with an exhibition Decoding Metaphors for the 21st Century at Rider University that opens a week earlier, on March 12, 2009, and includes a selection of works from 2000-2008 accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by art historian, Mona Hadler, and an interview with Rider Gallery Director, Harry I. Naar.

Michael Steinberg Fine Art thanks Neal Greenberg of AudioInteriors Inc. for the generous loan of audio-video equipment used in this show.