Sondra Perry. Wall 2 (2016). Video projection.

Opening January 20, 2017, 6–9pm
Public conversation with Sondra Perry at 7:30pm
On View through May 6, 2017

The five works included in this exhibition of work by Sondra Perry are critical investigations into the way digital technology gives shape and encompasses representation.

netherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr 2.0 (2017) is a video work that establishes a sonority that is articulated throughout the exhibit with an examination of the Windows operating system’s “Blue Screen of Death,” the screen that appears when the Windows operating system is frozen in error. A similar shade of blue—a chroma-key paint used for industrial special effects work—covers the gallery except for one wall, which is covered by a manipulated video projection of the artist’s skin titled Wall 2 (2017). The same image of Perry’s skin is also used as the backdrop for her digital avatar in Ashes for Three Monitor Workstation (2017), a video installation mounted on a manual treadmill. Finally, our window space features Wet and Wavy Looks—Typhon coming on: Fields (2017), a video piece that features a digitally-manipulated image of Joseph Turner’s 1840 painting Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on in an ocean modifier, an ocean simulation tool in the free and open -source 3D computer graphics software Blender. The manipulated presence of the artist’s skin, voice, and person throughout the exhibition map an interface in which representation and refusal are utilized and fleshed out.

Perry will be present for the opening, and will be joined by Squeaky Wheel Executive Director Maiko Tanaka for a public conversation. A newly commissioned essay by art and art history scholar and critic Soyoung Yoon accompanies the exhibition. You can read her essay on our tumblr, here.

Sondra Perry. Ashes for Three Monitor Workstation (2017)

Sondra Perry. flesh out. Installation view.

About the Artist

Sondra Perry was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1986. Perry holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Alfred University. In 2015, the artist’s work appeared in the fourth iteration of the Greater New York exhibition at MoMA/PS1. Other exhibitions include Disguise: Masks and Global African Art, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2015; A Curious Blindness, Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, New York (2015); Of Present Bodies, Arlington Arts Center, Arlington VA (2014); and Young, Gifted, & Black: Transforming Visual Media, The Camera Club of New York (2012). Perry performed Sondra Perry & Associate Make Pancakes and Shame the Devil at the Artist’s Institute, New York, in 2015. The artist’s work has been screened at venues such as Les Voutes, Paris, France; Light Industry, New York; Video Art and Experimental Film Festival, Tribeca Cinemas, New York; Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Shenyang China; and LOOP Barcelona Media Arts Festival. Perry was a panelist at Black Artists on Social Media at the Brooklyn Museum, NY. Perry has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, Ox-bow, and the Experimental Television Center. Perry is currently based in Houston, Texas as part of the artist-in-residence program CORE at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.