Mireille Mosler, Ltd. is pleased to announce Sequence, an exhibition of drawings and a 16-millimeter film by Brooklyn-based artist Jenny Perlin.
The exhibition title Sequence is shared with an installation of 160 drawings of ink of vellum, each drawing covered in a monochrome of 500 small squares in grid formation, in alternating colors of red, yellow, green and blue on each new sheet. The drawn grids are echoed in the grid of the installation, where the 160 unframed drawings cover an entire gallery wall floor-to-ceiling. Perlin created 500 squares per drawing, four drawings per day, in sum marking the passage of forty consecutive days. Perlin defines parameters for the work: once she has dipped her brush in ink, she cannot dip it again until the brush has completely run out of color. Thus, the temporality is visible within individual sheets; color-saturated squares fade as the succession eventually consumes the brush’s color. Every few rows, the process recommences with fresh ink. Although Perlin follows the parameters of the project with diligence, subtle irregularities such as the consistency of the paint, wavering lines, and imprecise grids give the drawings each a unique character, attached to a precise moment in the artist’s process of making the work.
Like Sequence, Flight also traces the passing of time as Perlin experienced it, however it also traces her movement through geographical space, as evidenced by a paper trail of airport receipts. A five-minute animation, projected on 16-millimeter film, traces Perlin’s redrawing the text of 18 receipts. Several receipt drawings created in the making of the film are also exhibited as independent works. The viewer observes the peculiar language of the receipts, Sbarro Pizza exclaiming, “Thank you very much! Please exercise regularly!”, “Providing care and comfort to people away from home,” from Oakland, CA, and almost always “Have a nice flight!” By documenting such insignificant acts of daily consumption, Perlin comments on the generic language and temporality of economic transactions. Simultaneously, she reveals fragments of her own personal history and experience, albeit at the distance of disposable receipts or the frequently used abstract of a grid.
Jenny Perlin received her MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and did postgraduate work at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. She has had solo exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York (2006); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2005); and the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas (2005). Her group exhibitions have included 3 Visions: Jenny Perlin, Peter Sarkisian, Hiraki Sawa, Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee (forthcoming 2008); The California Files, CAA Wattis Center for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2007); Negatec, Fundación Telefónica, Buenos Aires (2007); Version animée, Centre pour l’image Contemporaine, Geneva (2006); The Golden Hour, Gigantic Art Space, New York (2006); When Artists Say We, Artists Space, New York (2006); A Perfect Union…More or Less, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2004); and Aldrich at the Movies, The Aldrich Museum, CT (2004).
