By Suzanne Anker
Located in Surfside, FL
"Cocoon (1990)" by Suzanne Anker
Suzanne Anker (born August 6, 1946) is an American visual artist and theorist. Considered a pioneer in Bio Art. She has been working at the relationship of art and the biological sciences for more than twenty five years. Her practice investigates the ways in which nature is being altered in the 21st century. Concerned with genetics, climate change, species extinction and toxic degradation, she calls attention to the beauty of life and the "necessity for enlightened thinking about nature’s 'tangled bank'.” Anker frequently works with "pre-defined and found materials"botanical specimens, medical museum artifacts, laboratory apparatus, microscopic images and geological specimens.
Suzanne Anker was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 6, 1946. She earned a B.A. in Art from Brooklyn College of the City of New York and an M.F.A. from the University of Colorado in Boulder (1976). She also completed independent Studies with Ad Reinhardt (1966-1967) and studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (1968). She lives with the artist Frank Gillette in Manhattan and East Hampton, NY.
During the mid 70s to the mid 80s, Anker worked almost exclusively on sculptural handmade paper reliefs. She started papermaking in 1974 on the basis of reading Dard Hunter's and Claire Romano's books. In 1975 she worked with Garner Tullis at the Institute of Experimental Printmaking in Santa Cruz, California. The paper reliefs produced at his institute were exhibited at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York City in 1976.[ The same year, she participated in the North American Hand Papermaking exhibition organized by Richard Minsky at the Center for Book Arts in New York City.
From a background as a printmaker, Anker initially worked with cast paper, made in latex molds. Subsequently, she incorporated limestone and fossils in her experiment with combinations of paper and stone. For her 1979 solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Anker installed large limestone planks that extended from the interior to the exterior of the gallery. The same year, she presented an installation of limestone and its residual chalk dust at P.S. 1’s "A Great Big Drawing Show" curated by Alanna Heiss with artists Vito Acconci, Alice Aycock, Frank Gillette, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, and others.
Suzanne Anker is considered "one of the pioneers in the broader field of art, science, and technology", particularly in the burgeoning field of Bio Art.
In 1994, Suzanne Anker curated Gene Culture: Molecular Metaphor in Visual Art – one of the first art exhibitions on the subject of art and genetics – at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus in New York. The exhibition investigated "the ways in which genetic imaging operates as aesthetic signs".
From 2004 to 2006, Suzanne Anker hosted twenty episodes of the Bio-Blurb Show, a 30-minute-long internet radio program originally broadcast on WPS1 Art Radio, in collaboration with MoMA. The show focused on the intersection of art and the biological sciences, and the ethical and aesthetic dimensions therein. It is currently archived on Alanna Heiss’ Clocktower Productions.
In 2006, Anker co-curated the exhibition Neuroculture: Visual Art and the Brain, at the Westport Arts Center with Giovanni Frazzetto. The exhibition presented an investigation of aspects of the human brain, and its attendant representations.
Suzanne Anker is the Chair of the School of Visual Arts (SVA)'s BFA Fine Arts Department in New York City (2005-present). She previously chaired the SVA BFA Art History Department (2000-2005). In 2011, Anker founded the SVA Bio Art Lab, the first Bio Art laboratory in a Fine Arts Department in the United States. The SVA Bio Art Lab is located in Chelsea, New York City and has been conceived as a place where "scientific tools and techniques become methodologies in art practice".
Anker has participated in lectures and symposia in prominent institutions around the world, including Harvard University, Boston; University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Yale University, New Haven; Art-Sci UCLA, Los Angeles; Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; London School of Economics, London; European Molecular Biology Laboratory- EMBL, Monterotondo, Italy; Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden; Leiden University, NL; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee; Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Banff Art Center, Alberta; The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, D.C.; Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin;[ University of Amsterdam, NL; New York Academy of Sciences, Institute for the Humanities, New York University; DLD, Munich.
Selected artworks
Gene Pool
Anker’s interests in the natural world extended her investigation into the microscopic domain of chromosomes and genes. Appropriating scientific images, she created Gene Pool in 1991, a body of work that includes suspended pigment on large vellum sheets and expansive sculptural arrays employing metallic fibers of stainless steel, copper, aluminum and bronze.
Other works that reflect scientific representations of chromosomes include Chromosome Chart of Suzanne Anker –a presentation of her own DNA sequence as a self-portrait– and Cellular Script, in which she displays chromosome patterns as a kind of calligraphy.
Biota (2011) is a sculptural installation by Suzanne Anker composed of porcelain sculptures and silver-leaf figurines. The porcelain objects are fabricated by immersing natural sea sponges into a mixture of kaolin, feldspar, and quartz. "The organic material of the sponge burns away in the process, leaving behind only the perfect replica of nature".
Exhibitions
Selected one-person exhibitions
"The Biosphere Blues Mending an Unhinged Earth", O'NewWall, Seoul, Korea (2017).
“Culturing Life”, Sam Francis Gallery...
Category
1990s Mixed Media Sculptures
