95-09-01: BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH: A DOCTOR'S ART CONFRONTS MORTALITY AND TIME Visitors put on surgical masks and pass through a steel door into a dark operating room dimly lit by fluorescent lights. Under a blue sheet, the chest of an apparent patient, hooked to an electrocardiogram and an anesthesia machine, moves up and down. IV bags, in glowing red, blue and yellow, line the room, along with mirrored chairs. What viewers are experiencing is the avant garde "Life Crisis" exhibit by Floidida anesthesiologist and artist Carl Tandatnick featured in Newcomb Hall's Artspace Gallery. Depending on when viewers enter, they will hear part of a 26- minute tape of four scenarios representing patients at various stages of life _ youth, adulthood and old age. Sounds fill the room _ heartbeats, monitors, babies crying, children laughing, patients choking and struggling to breathe, doctors' and nurses' voices, helicopters. Each scenario is punctuated by the sound of three of the four elements _ water, wind and fire. The last element _ earth _ is supplied by the viewer. According to Dr. Tandatnick, the black background of the exhibit creates a two-dimensional effect, a "line drawing in space," isolating the visitor from the realities of daily experience. Dr. Tandatnick hopes that the viewer will be "sucked into the exhibit by the hook of its beauty, but once inside, will be forced to confront deeper issues of his or her own mortality." "The goal of the exhibit," he said, "is to dislocate the viewer from the mundane, so that he or she can ultimately appreciate it. It is the comparison that drives home the point. Life is a very precious thing, and even the most ordinary daily experiences are important and need to be cherished." The idea for "Life Crisis" came to Dr. Tandatnick while he was observing a laparoscopic surgery: "I saw all the lights out, and I watched the physicians operating while using TV screens. The monitors were glowing, and I thought 'this is beautiful.'" Studying Zen at the time, he sought to use his knowledge of Buddhism and of medicine to express the fragility of mortality, "of being there and not being there." A recipient of New York's Alternative Museum's 1993 National Showcase Award, Dr. Tandatnick was invited to present a solo exhibit _ which became "Life Crisis" _ at the museum in 1994. Dr. Tandatnick, a practicing anesthesiologist, comes from a family of doctors, but has thought of himself as an artist from an early age. He first became aware of the beauty of medicine and of the human body while viewing histology slides of blood cells. Following Andy Warhol's and Robert Rauschenberg's use of popular media images in their art, Dr. Tandatnick started creating collages of blood cells, first in color Xerox and later in silk-screen, on canvas: "An artist has to talk about what he knows best. Because I function within the world of medicine, life and death -- and the thread that hangs between life and death -- are core to my work. I want to communicate this to the public." More recently, as the AIDS epidemic has evolved, Dr. Tandatnick's work has changed to incorporate a cellular vision of "our contemporary plague," as he called it. By focusing on a cellular vision of the AIDS virus, his rendering of electron micrograph images emphasizes the relentless nature of the virus itself, not the question of the lifestyles of the people affected by it. Just as Warhol used the iconography of current cultural images to create pop for the 1950s, Dr. Tandatnick believes that his work functions similarly as pop for the '90s, reflecting the importance of a worldwide scientific revolution. "We are in the midst of a scientific renaissance, as important as the artistic renaissance in Italy several hundred years ago. The whole planet is science-savvy, unconsciously so. Science is now the real pop," he said. "The AIDS virus is a pivotal image for me, as well as an iconographic marker for the late 20th century. It is the antithetical pop icon for the '90s." Dr. Tandatnick's photosilk- screens of electron micrograph images of the AIDS virus have been exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia and at the New York AIDS Forum. On Dec. 1, 1994, as part of the art world's response to annual World AIDS Day, Dr. Tandatnick projected an electron micrograph image of the AIDS virus attacking a white blood cell on the Sony billboard in Times Square, with two superimposed phrases flashing in alternating fashion: "Today is Day Without Art . . . When is Day Without AIDS." After experiencing "Life Crisis," Dr. Joseph Stirt, until recently a practicing anesthesiologist at the University Hospital and author of the nonfiction work "Baby", said he found Dr. Tandatnick's work "riveting" and "compelling" in its exaggeration of the ordinary aspects of the operating room. "It does more to explain what an anesthesiologist does, what his or her life is about, than any single thing I have ever seen," he said. "It gives us a sense of the urgency, of the danger, of the fact that there is no second chance." Gabriel de Guzman and Robin Iten, student co-directors of Artspace Gallery, hope to use the scientific emphasis of "Life Crisis" to bring the issues of contemporary art to the attention of the University and the Charlottesville community. "We want to bring art exhibits that involve more people in the community _ not just the art community," said Mr. de Guzman. Ms. Iten added that the exhibit shows that "art does not have to be a painting on a wall." Also on the cutting edge of cyberspace, Dr. Tandatnick will be featured in the on-line experimental arts magazine ArtsLink, which will launched on the Internet this fall. To receive the World Wide Web address, send an e-mail message to artlink@interport.net. WRITTEN BY NANCY LOEVINGER "Life Crisis" is open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Oct. 15 at the Artspace Gallery on the third floor of Newcomb Hall. The exhibit is made possible in part by the Health Sciences Center and University Union, as well as many businesses and individuals. The exhibit may be followed by a showing of Dr. Tandatnick's "USAIDS" photosilk-screen installation. For more details about "Life Crisis" or the following exhibit, call University Union at 924-3286. Information about the show is also on U.Va.'s web site at "http://minerva.acc.Virginia.EDU:80/~newhall/lfecris.html."