ARTS
VISUALART
B Y CHRISTOPHER SCHNOOR
OF THE BEHOLDER The Devorah Sperber experience
use of Swarovski crystals, marker pen caps, colored faceted beads or other mundane items that come in a wide range of colors suggest an affinity for the unusual. Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of Sperber’s work is its merging of neuroscience, optics and computer technology with a Duchampian playfulness and a subtle folk o one can deny the growing intersection between art and art sensibility. The material beauty of these works, demonstrates an science, the nature of which is being increasingly discussed acute sensitivity to the character ordinary things and textiles can by scientific and cultural commentators in the media and in possess. The dignity Sperber says she looks for in her materials is on literature. This interdisciplinary dialogue has been fed by advances ample display here. in imaging technology and computers’ ability to replicate neurologiAnyone who saw the Chuck Close exhibit at BAM in 2007 cal functions and other organic processes. We have also seen an cannot help but be struck by the similarities between Close’s prints intense interest in environmental issues, human genetics and the life and paintings, and where Sperber is coming from in her art. Indeed, sciences on the part of artClose’s work was the origiists, especially regarding the nal inspiration for her interblurring of the boundaries est in exploring visual perbetween the biological and ception in the studio. Both the artificial. The result has begin with a photographic been a new experiential image of the subject, which direction taking place in art, they then deconstruct into particularly sculpture and its visual components. installation, as demonstratClose’s technique is to ed by Boise Art Museum’s impose a grid system that current exhibition of breaks the image down work by sculptor Devorah into thousands of small Sperber whose marriage of squares and within each he these opposing perspectives draws or paints the minute subverts the old left-brain/ abstract notations that right-brain dichotomy we together construct a realistic take for granted. image on a monumental What is perhaps ironic scale. Sperber deconstructs about this trend is that her photographic subjects artists have in many cases digitally, by breaking the turned to science and techimage down into pixels via nology out of a desire to computer. By matching an recapture a flesh-and-blood individual spool of thread relevance in their work (or other object) with a corwhich has been lost in an responding pixel, Sperber electronic/digital age that creates a three-dimensional limits us to secondhand, composition on a much virtual experiences. As New larger scale. In addition, York art critic Nancy Prinher chenille-stem series Devorah Sperber, After Vermeer 2, 2006, 5,024 spools of thread, stainless steel ball centhal has written, there is called “After Dali, After chain and hanging apparatus, clear acrylic viewing sphere on metal stand, currently a shared “asHarmon” are reminiscent 100” x 96”. sumption of humankind’s of Close’s mutating serial creeping disembodiment images. [e.g.] reproduction without sex, fetishism without eroticism, minds Nevertheless, there are significant differences in their art as well, without wetware, fatal damage without death …” Yet, surprisingly, which are informative. Close captures on paper or canvas the way this cultural malaise has in many cases inspired artists to find an a camera sees a person versus how the human eye sees them. He aesthetic response within the very technologies that brought us to deliberately chooses anonymous, ordinary people for his “heads,” this predicament in the first place. And interestingly, more often than whose faces usually have a passive, non-expressiveness to them. This not, it is women artists who are pioneering this new sensibility. way he eliminates the “distractions” of familiarity and celebrity. He Sperber’s exhibit is the second in BAM’s series entitled “Threads wants us to respond to the objective, democratic nature of photogof Perception,” which began in 2008 as a three-year program geared raphy, where all the surface components are given equal importance, to new ideas and ground-breaking artwork that draw on scientific without the mental baggage. thought and technology to visualize the mental act of perception, Sperber, on the other hand, captures both what the eye sees and and consider its social and cultural implications. Conceived by BAM what the brain does with that information, i.e., our “visual biology,” art curator Sandy Harthorn, who has been particularly attuned to which is subjectively influenced by cultural forces, too. Her choice of the new directions in sculptural and installation art (BW, Arts, “Art art historical subject matter is based in part on those artists from the After the ‘Isms’,” May 6, 2009), the program invites artists who past whose art was informed by the science and technology of the “have achieved recognition for their inventive use of digital and day, such as Hans Holbein. unconventional media to explore perception-related issues.” For those subjects composed of thousands of spools of thread The inaugural exhibition of the series was the elaborate construc- strung on steel ball chains, Sperber has chosen to recreate iconic tion/deconstruction project “After” by Lead Pencil Studio, which oc- works by famous western artists like DaVinci (The Mona Lisa, The cupied BAM’s indoor and outdoor sculpture courts from November Last Supper), Vermeer (Girl with the Pearl Earring) and van Eyck 2008 to last May. Constructed from non-art and found materials, (Man with a Red Turban)—all paintings we know by sight, which “After” was a multi-layered architectural statement that addressed is the point. Displayed inverted on the wall, the compositions are organic processes like regeneration and decay, exploring the transiimpossible to sort out, our eye pulled in all directions by swarms of tory nature of the seemingly secure while toying with our ingrained shifting color patterns. As we peer through the clear acrylic viewing perceptions of whether a structure is on the way up or the down. sphere placed in front of the work (our brain), the image appears Sperber’s project is also based on a found-material aesthetic, but upright and everything clicks. Recognition is swift and startling as hers is of a very different sort, one that makes “Threads of Percepour memory takes over and fills in the details. Sperber makes it postion” a particularly appropriate title for her exhibit. As technologisible for us to experience this transformation as if in slow motion. cally savvy and unconventional as her work is, it has a strong craft This unique, illuminating treatise on the “art of seeing” preselement to it with obvious ties to fabric art. Using wooden spools ents an intriguing taste of the possibilities science offers to the of colored thread and stitched-together pipe cleaners as installation contemporary artist. It will be interesting to see if and how Spermediums puts her squarely in the company of other contemporary ber applies these principles in taking her own original imagery in artists exhibited at BAM in recent years, like Hildar Bjarnadotnew directions. tir, Kendall Buster and Gerri Saylor, who also have acknowledged “Threads of Perception” runs through September. Boise Art Muwomen’s skilled traditional handiwork in their sculpture, thereby seum, 670 E. Julia Davis Dr., 208-345-8330, boiseartmuseum.org. resurrecting the imprint of the human hand. So, too, does Sperber’s BOISE ART MUSEUM
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| JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2009 |
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