Opening reception: Thursday September 4, from 6-8pm
For the upcoming season, the gallery is pleased to present "Present" a series of guest curated exhibitions in the project space.
The series will be inaugurated by Luis Camnitzer, Uruguayan conceptual artist, writer and curator, supervisor of the Society for the reification of things, treasurer of the International Fund for the Education of Oligarchs, administrator of the Origamist for Absolute Density Guild and dean of Lucy-Was-Jewish School of Creationist Anthropology.
Kerstin Persson could be classed as a “conceptual realist.” Her rendering skills for representation and reproduction are up to any academic standards, however, her use of them is all but academic: she does away with the re to directly present and produce. Realism in her work is not about depicting the world and what we know, but becomes a device to capture what we don’t know. Yet, she goes beyond that too, because in her case presence here reveals as much as absence. What we are left with is the abstract insight of revelation that often comes with futility. In previous work she videotapes herself vigorously shaking a quotidian object and accompanies the video with paintings of trembling shadows. In another piece she places white cubes on a pool table. The cubes bear the different views of a corresponding and carefully rendered billiard ball.
The sculptural object that is the centerpiece of her present installation is a hybrid of found and made. It possesses form (rock, crystal, geometric solid) and at the same time leaves the impression of being less than formed, even unformed. Her choice of color accentuates this ambiguity. It’s a color without name. It seems to absorb rather than reflect or emit. Thus the object appears to lie somewhere between no-life and life, in a state of potential, of becoming. Since there is no tangible information to provide clues, we are at first intrigued and then mesmerized, drawn to project our imagination without knowing if her work will accept or reject it. We don’t find out. The drawings – portraits taken at ten-degree distance – make us turn around ourselves and not around the model. The object's ambiguity and denial of access is reinforced by these multiple renderings that add no more information, no new clues. The drawings take the place of false mirrors. They only reflect the sequence, but neither the beginning nor the end. Together with the centerpiece, they construct a space in which we are allowed to circulate. We do so following the object’s orders, pondering what we would like to know but has been withheld.