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Both Kindra Crick and Carolyn Bernstein, jointly showing at the D.C. Jewish Community Center’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, operate at the intersection of art and science. For Crick, there’s an intriguing element of genetics-is-destiny to her approach—-her grandfather was Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and neuroscientist, and her grandmother was Odile Crick, a painter. The exhibit includes pale-hued works that meditate on physiology and chemistry—-the recurring image of a fetus gestating within a brain is a particular favorite of the artist—-as well as darker collages that incorporate laquered, flattened pieces of archival paper. Carolyn Bernstein’s works, focused on the experience of cancer, are more plainly emotive, though visually they are even more intricate. Her “Yew Tree Project” is a multifaceted, room-sized installation that delves into patients’ battles with cancer and the development of the drug Taxol from the yew tree. Bernstein takes body scans and other medical documentation and redraws them by hand. Her most notable piece is her complex flow chart, also drawn in her steady hand, that places “cancer diagnosis” at the center of a dizzyingly complicated series of decision trees, and whose byzantine form echoes that of the yew tree’s leaves.
Through April 24 at the D.C. Jewish Community Center’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, 1529 16th Street NW, Washington D.C. (202) 518-9400. Sunday-Thursday 10 a.m.-10 p.m., and Friday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.