ART AND COMPLEX SYSTEMS

“Levy has explored the similarities of the social, the biological, and the technological with the pictorial. Because of this she has recently become involved with scientific Complexity Theory. The development of complexity theory was catalyzed by the Santa Fe Institute founded in the mid 1980s, bringing together researchers from physics, economics, mathematics, and computer science. . . . Complex systems attain a special kind of balance out of many independent agents interacting with each other in numerous ways. They form, in fact, a dynamic order that is precariously close to the edge of chaos. This is the edge where the components of a system never quite lock into place, nor ever quite dissolve into turbulence either. . . . The edge of chaos is not only the edge of catastrophe but also the edge of adaptive creativity. It is at this edge where Ellen Levy proposes to have her work function.”

Sara L. Henry, catalog essay for the exhibition, “Disorder and Early Sorrow,” Drew (NJ) University Gallery, 1993 and Wild Galerie (Frankfurt), 1993

“The profound importance of Ellen Levy's art lies in this demonstration, this unbaring of the deepest connections between the process of history, the progress of form development, and the activity of physical collecting.”

Bruce Robertson, “Painting in the House of Solomon,” Woman's Art Journal, 2013; 34(2): 11-20

“As in magic shows, my aim is to focus on seeing as a matter of both vision and comprehension. To this end, I use a variety of media, including painting, animation, and augmented reality (AR) in my installations.”

Ellen K. Levy