Jenny Perlin: Sight Reading main, 22 January - 26 February 2005

Annet Gelink Gallery is proud to present its second exhibition of American artist Jenny Perlin (1970 USA). Jenny Perlin has shown in numerous international art venues including De Appel, Amsterdam, The Approach Gallery, London, Gallery 400, Chicago, P.S. 1, New York and Statements 2002 Art Basel Miami Beach. The Rotterdam Film Festival will be screening her work for the third time.

It is mesmerizing to watch music being translated into physical action, creation in real time.
 James Yood, ARTFORUM Sept. 2004

In Jenny Perlin's 3-channel video projection Sight Reading, 2004 three professional pianists perform a piano piece they have never played before. They begin at the same moment, each proceeding at their own speed. The piece, Robert Schumann's piano concerto in A minor, is difficult and the pianists soon make mistakes. After every mistake a pianist makes the screen goes dark for 5 seconds. The piece becomes increasingly challenging and the screens turn black more and more often.

Sight Reading is a literal investigation of how John Dewey defined artistic experience - to witness the act of creation. Sight Reading is instantaneous performance, engaging the brain, eyes, hands, and the entire body of each musician. The installation heightens the intensity of this activity by focusing on its moments of failure.

Copying as a creative act is a recurring theme in the work of Jenny Perlin. Possible Models [2004] employs a technique the artist began using in 1999. She hand-draws printed material (in this case newspaper texts and architectural sketches). She photographs her sheets with a 16mm cine camera as she gradually works up the drawing. This creates the sensation of a typewriter revealing the text at the speed of reading. Now and then there are interferences and the film jumps. The antique 16mm format and the technique Perlin uses create an awareness of the mechanical devices used to shoot and project the film.

Possible Models is made up of three narratives whose subjects are the history of the shopping mall, a futuristic cruise ship currently under construction for the super rich, and a Somali immigrant charged in 2004 with plotting a terrorist attack on an Ohio mall. The film describes the utopian dream on which the United States of America was built - the dream of the self-supporting community, invulnerable and loved. And it tells of the violation and perversion of this dream.

The untitled series of drawings (ink on tracing paper) presents an ongoing project in which Perlin observes the ways nature is restricted in urban and rural environments. They are a detailed investigation of trees in landscapes ranging from Belgrade to Brooklyn. These drawings reflect an aspect of Perlin's longstanding interest in the homogenization of everyday life.