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visual arts | by Bill Jeffries THE SPHERE Presentation House Gallery opens the fall exhibition season with group exhibition of an international contemporary range from the The human cranium as a constructed sphere is examined in the works by Deanne Achong, Paul McCarthy, Michael Euyung Oh, and Geoffrey Smedley. The sphere as an artifact of natural forces is at the basis of Susan Coolen's practice, and Lisa Klapstock works with found holes that, as images, are spheres formed Nauman's from late negative 1960s space. Bruce work The exhibition also features t w o projects drawn of directly from recent scientific the first research. Dr. Arif Babul at the University Victoria has created computer-generated SPHERE may be a speculative foray into the world of Spherology, but it is also meant to raise questions about how humans choose, and overlook, subjects in art and in science. Spheres, as a separate subject, have been outside the current paradigms in both areas, taken for granted, perhaps, as part of the background noise of the universe. It could simulation of the conceptual be proposed, for instance, that the history of ideas itself, as a 'working around the subject of knowledge', can be seen as a spherical entity in which the accumulation of information enlarges the size of the bubble of knowledge. explorations of 'the sphere'. The spheres selected for the show microbiological to the cosmologlcal, and include several explorations of the most photographed sphere of a l l , the human head. These crania are presented as both idealized forms and mutated spheroids. Over the past thirty years, as 'global'-izatlon and 'spheres of influence' have had an increasingly large impact on the public sphere, many artists have been working around the new subject-area has recently coined as that the Spherology. Dutch/German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk Sloterdijk's neologism is the subject of his three contentious books, titled Spharen.They have generated much debate in Europe, in part because he has extended and reaches beyond emphasized the notion that the fundamental Importance of spheres science and Into philosophy and art. The ubiquity and simplicity of the sphere-asidea provided the organizing principle for the exhibition. Although SPHERE is an exhibition that can be theorized in complex ways, the images in it are seductively easy to look at. Each artist in SPHERE had specific reasons for working with the ideas and images in the show, but, taken as a group, they have mapped out some of the analytical possibilities in art for the fundamental strangeness, mystery (Lindsay Seers) and beauty of spheres. The spheres presented here are cultural artifacts (William Eakin) as well as metaphysical phenomena (Holly Armlshaw). The links between the lost ideals of Renaissance Humanism are examined in Geoffrey Smedley's work and contemporary ironic concerns are addressed by the work of Laurie Simmons/Allan McCollum. The c o n n e c t i o n s between decay (Lynda Gammon) and entropy and between mutation (Daniel Lee, Paul McCarthy) and evolution's crooked arrow, are depicted in photography and sculpture. BOTTLE CAPS, 1999, WILLIAM EAKIN FUJIFLEX CRYSTAL ARCHIVE CHROMOGENIC PRINTS, 40" X 40" EACH Untitled (Body as a Sphere) receives its first-ever performances as part of this exhibition. upcoming collision between the Milky Way and its neighbour galaxy, Andromeda. This will be shown as a video loop. A small selection of colorful viruses imaged by Dr. Jean-Yves Sgro at the University of Wisconsin will be shown as framed works representing the microbiological end of the spherical spectrum. September | October 9