Hirsch Perlman
12 May - 23 Jun 2007
HIRSCH PERLMAN
ergo despero
May 12 – June 23, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 12, 2007 6-8 pm
Blum & Poe is pleased to announce our third solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Hirsch Perlman.
For this exhibit, Perlman presents two new series of images. The first, “ergo despero,” is a series of black and white photographs, long exposures of the coastline and breaking waves that are not immediately recognizable. The photos flip our perception from one reality and scale to another: from familiar comforts of playing in the sand on a sunny day to a dark, mysterious, and gigantic realm. The works are reminiscent of NASA photographs from missions to the Moon and Mars, yet their darker nature belies the notion of hope usually associated with dreams of space travel or discovering new lands. Instead, they reflect more of a mythic scene, one scorched by global warming, or frozen from a nuclear winter, suggesting a caustic warning rather than a promising exploration.
The exhibit also includes a series of large silk-screen prints of cat drawings entitled “Schrödinger Cats,” named after the Austrian physicist’s quantum thought experiment, which uses a cat to illustrate the paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics. Isolated in a box, the cat is, in theory, both dead and alive. The only way to measure its actual state unaffected by outside forces, requires outside forces, thereby tainting the whole process.
“Schrödinger Cats,” like the photographs, also flip between two entirely different perceptions. While their title comes from a physics thought experiment, the affect of these intimate sketches seems derived from the illustrator Louis Wain, known as “the man who drew cats.” The cats act as watchful sentinels, alien citizens observing the wasteland. In turn, Perlman establishes both a meditative and an anxious relationship between the cats and the landscapes— each denaturing the other.
The final component of the exhibition will consist of an independently published, unlimited run of the official counterinsurgency manual, approved for public distribution by the U.S. army. Perlman flips even the means and motives of “insurgency” and “counterinsurgency” by selling the manuals at a nominal fee, with proceeds benefiting both National Popular Vote (working to dismantle the electoral college) and The Center for Constitutional Rights (an organization fighting for the rights of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to contest their detentions).
Perlman has exhibited at institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Drammens Museum, Drammens, Norway; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; and P.S.1, New York, NY. Hirsch Perlman was born in 1960 and is a graduate of Yale University.
ergo despero
May 12 – June 23, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 12, 2007 6-8 pm
Blum & Poe is pleased to announce our third solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Hirsch Perlman.
For this exhibit, Perlman presents two new series of images. The first, “ergo despero,” is a series of black and white photographs, long exposures of the coastline and breaking waves that are not immediately recognizable. The photos flip our perception from one reality and scale to another: from familiar comforts of playing in the sand on a sunny day to a dark, mysterious, and gigantic realm. The works are reminiscent of NASA photographs from missions to the Moon and Mars, yet their darker nature belies the notion of hope usually associated with dreams of space travel or discovering new lands. Instead, they reflect more of a mythic scene, one scorched by global warming, or frozen from a nuclear winter, suggesting a caustic warning rather than a promising exploration.
The exhibit also includes a series of large silk-screen prints of cat drawings entitled “Schrödinger Cats,” named after the Austrian physicist’s quantum thought experiment, which uses a cat to illustrate the paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics. Isolated in a box, the cat is, in theory, both dead and alive. The only way to measure its actual state unaffected by outside forces, requires outside forces, thereby tainting the whole process.
“Schrödinger Cats,” like the photographs, also flip between two entirely different perceptions. While their title comes from a physics thought experiment, the affect of these intimate sketches seems derived from the illustrator Louis Wain, known as “the man who drew cats.” The cats act as watchful sentinels, alien citizens observing the wasteland. In turn, Perlman establishes both a meditative and an anxious relationship between the cats and the landscapes— each denaturing the other.
The final component of the exhibition will consist of an independently published, unlimited run of the official counterinsurgency manual, approved for public distribution by the U.S. army. Perlman flips even the means and motives of “insurgency” and “counterinsurgency” by selling the manuals at a nominal fee, with proceeds benefiting both National Popular Vote (working to dismantle the electoral college) and The Center for Constitutional Rights (an organization fighting for the rights of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to contest their detentions).
Perlman has exhibited at institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Drammens Museum, Drammens, Norway; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; and P.S.1, New York, NY. Hirsch Perlman was born in 1960 and is a graduate of Yale University.