Fringe is extremely pleased to present a solo show featuring biotopes by Eduardo Kac.

"Specimen of Secrecy about Marvelous Discoveries" is a series of works comprised of what Kac calls "biotopes". They are living works of art that change in response to internal metabolism and environmental conditions. Each of the biotopes is a self-sustaining ecology comprised of thousands of very small living beings in a medium of earth, water, and other materials. The artist orchestrates the metabolism of these organisms in order to produce his constantly evolving living works. The works start to change in response to environmental circumstances, including temperature, relative humidity, airflow, and light levels in the exhibition space. Kac has termed these works "biotopes" because they are literally an ecological community of diverse microbial life. The populations within the biotopes recycle nutrients and essentially support themselves. The six biotopes on view at Fringe were first presented at the Singapore Biennale in September 2006. Special thank you to Denise King for her support on this project.

Considered one of today's leading artists, Kac opened at the dawn of the twenty-first century a new direction for contemporary art with his "bio art"--first with a groundbreaking net installation entitled Genesis (1999), which included an "artist's gene" he invented, and then with his fluorescent rabbit called Alba (2000). From his first online works in 1985 to his current convergence of the digital and the biological, Kac has always investigated the poetic, philosophical and political dimensions of communication processes. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Exit Art and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, and Lieu Unique, Nantes, France; OK Contemporary Art Center, Linz, Austria; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; and Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro and has been showcased in biennials such as Yokohama Triennial, Japan, Biennale de São Paulo, Brazil, and Gwangju Biennale, Korea. Kac’s work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, among others. He will have a mid-career survey at the Museum of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain, in September 2007. His writings are collected in several volumes, including Telepresence and Bio Art:

Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots (Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press, 2005). His anthology Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), documents the history and theory of bio art.