As self-declared C.E.O., top scientist, lead artist, and resident pataphysician of a fictional corporation called Adipose Industries, Enid Bleachman creates multimedia artworks that express her environmental concerns while they explore the promise of repurposing body fat as a source of home energy and beauty products. With allegiance to art and science, fiction and fact, personal fulfillment and saving the planet through recycling resources, she borrows the trappings of science to “build a facade of authenticity.” In a manner akin to the comic genius of Monty Python, she riffs on axiomatic absurdity; The Yes Men, performance artists who gleefully emulate and mock the corporate world, are also a huge influence. Bleachman’s corporate headquarters/laboratory/studio are in Easthampton, but she lives part-time in Florida and draws deeply on the Everglades in her recent work Enid Bleachman and Adipose Industries Present A Pataphysical Conversation: Underwater Research and the Everglades, The Search for Fat.•
Oct. 5-31; opening reception Oct. 5, 2-4 p.m., Hampden Gallery, Hampden Commons, Southwest Residential Area UMass-Amherst, (413) 545-0680, umass.edu/fac/hampden.