Video Art 3 Visions

Video Art/3 Visions presents three independent video works that demonstrate the range of expressive and technical possibilities within this thriving art medium. Jenny Perlin, Peter Sarkisian, and Hiraki Sawa are acknowledged masters of electronic media who approach their materials in distinctly different ways with dramatically different results. Perlin focuses on the effects of sound and editing, Sarkisian on the physical effect of video footage projected onto three-dimensional forms, and Sawa on subtle, poetic imagery linked to childhood and domestic environments. Video Art/3 Visions represents the first time Perlin’s and Sarkisian’s work has been shown in Tennessee.

In Sight Reading (2004), Jenny Perlin highlights rather than masks errors that occur when three professional pianists perform Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor for the first time simultaneously. As the video progresses, the virtuoso performances become increasingly disjointed from one another and chaos ensues.

In Dusted (1998), Peter Sarkisian uses five projectors to create an eerie three-dimensional illusion of mysterious figures seemingly trapped inside a transparent cube. According to the artist, the piece is about “balance—the equal and opposite relationship between clarity and obscurity, growth and decay, life and death.” Sarkisian is a Santa Fe artist who has attracted broad attention for the manner in which he applies electronic media not as projected imagery on a flat screen or wall, but as a solid object in the center of a gallery space.

In Going Places Sitting Down (2004), Hiraki Sawa creates poetic settings that surround viewers’ visual field and blurs the boundaries between consciousness and dream. Filmed in the artist’s London apartment, the video shows three apparently empty rooms. After several moments elapse, hosts of tiny figures begin to emerge—rocking horses, camels and human characters from novels—and move throughout each space in a slow, meditative progression inspired by childhood fantasy and lost innocence.

Video Art 3 Visions
Jenny Perlin, Peter Sarkisian, Hiraki Sawa