From the cryptic paintings on the walls of prehistoric caves to the pop zoology of Animal Planet television, image-making has played a central role in recording and shaping the diverse, and often contradictory, attitudes humans hold toward the animal world. Like the positive and negative poles of a magnet, our human responses to animals are a complex mix of attraction and repulsion, admiration and exploitation, ignorance and understanding, empathy and indifference.

John Espinosa's Slow Fall Forward

The artists featured in this collection range from hunter/taxidermists of the nineteenth century to contemporary media artists who use the latest in interactive software. Some of the artworks featured include John Slepian's Pet, an nteractive video installation with a digitally-generated panorama; John Espinosa's Slow Fall Inward, a sculpture that combines taxidermy, brass, and wood, and attempts to diagram patterns of rabbit thought and sight; images from Sam Easterson's Animal, Vegetable, Video Project, which places cameras on the backs of live animals; and a collection of taxidermy artworks by collector and artist Tia Resleure.