Go figure

Two thoughtful, complicated perspectives on the body are currently holding court at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery. Both are informed by the pleasingly off-kilter views of their female curators, Danielle Roney and artist Jen Mazer, whose investigations of flesh and blood have a transcendent dimension.

Eyedrum’s Small Gallery has, of late, become a shockingly estrogen-centric place, as evidenced in Jena Sibille’s recent breast milk installation. Now comes visiting New York artist Mazer’s Etzchaim: Tree of Life, an unusual photographic project about venereal disease. Mazer places shockingly intimate close-up photographs of 10 women’s vaginas and 10 trees side-by-side in what can initially feel like a goofy, new agey feminist association of the female body with nature.

But the true depth of the project is revealed in audio recordings of the women pictured, who talk about their experiences with diseases as annoying and treatable as syphilis and as overwhelming as HIV. Mazer explores the idea of our wounds as a means of storytelling — a portal into experience and self. Her subjects speak of the uncanny reality of illness, as a kind of silent, ever-present partner shadowing these women through life.

The idea of “the figure” in art world terms is almost too enormous to contemplate, but Danielle Roney’s Conversations with the Contemporary Figure does an impressive job of creating a consistent, experimental mood, which allows artists to take both literal and sideways gambols into the topic. Natalie Larsen’s exquisite micro-cameos in which the artist has painted only miniature ears and noses onto tiny “Broaches” reduce the figure to a humorous speck. An equally winning coalescence of delicacy and wit is Meshakai Wolf’s video, which captures a fleeting human presence through shadows. It’s beautifully complemented by Brian Moreno’s suitably odd, charming musical compositions. The figure is a haunting vapor in Lorenza Lucchi Basili’s sound recordings and a self-generated lark in Mary Babcock and Kerry Phillips’ dueling rocking chairs, evocative of Deliverance, in which viewers can sit to make their own presence known.

Consistently surprising and paradigm-shifting, Mazer and Roney’s approach to familiar territory ends up offering exploratory, lyrical and unexpected work.

Etzchaim (Tree of Life) by Jen Mazer runs through May 22. Conversations with the Contemporary Figure curated by Danielle Roney runs through May 29. Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, 290 MLK Drive. Wed., Fri., Sat. noon-5 p.m. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.