News

"Cosmological Embeddedness"

by Vince Aletti

Cosmological Embeddedness

The New Yorker

7/7/2008

This engagingly eccentric group show, subtitled “The Flying Spaghetti Monster,” is intended to tweak the adherents of intelligent design, but its array of scientific, documentary, and just plain strange photographs would challenge (and entertain) any viewer. Tom Deernick’s microscopic images of the retina, the hippocampus, and penicillin look like drawings made under the influence of LSD, and Jerry Spagnoli’s woozy view down an urban street is just as trippy. But even the seemingly straightforward images here (such as Barbara Crane’s photograph of amputated monkey hands, raised in mute appeal) have a destabilizing effect. Faith and skepticism meet for a stoned soul picnic, and we’re invited. Through July 3. (Higher Pictures, 764 Madison Ave., at 65th St. 212-249-6100.)