Transcribing incisive and witty language into performance and painting, Asper
and Beecher have created a new body of work in which gesture and staging are
primary. Similar to Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona, this show brings together two women who play notions of
psychological depth against surface opacity.
During the reception at 8:00 pm Beecher
will present The Sublime is Now, Folks, a comedic performance conceived by
Beecher and performed by Anne Gridley of The Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Fusing
tropes of borscht belt entertainment with contemporary anecdotal stand-up
comedy, the routine recalls recalcitrant trials of being a female artist
watching the biological clock—from long days at work, to romantic dates gone
awry, to sonograms, to an abortion.
Beecher’s
free-standing, large format, color field, inkjet prints serve as a stage for
the performance, their organic appearance alluding to the visceral elements of
fertility, as well as the history of American color field painting. Printed on
transparent material and attached to moving platforms, Beecher’s prints
incorporate the space of the gallery into their images as they divide it. Both
Beecher’s writing practice and digital imaging incorporate what appears at
first to be accidents—every splotch and smudge is carefully edited and placed
in digital imaging software, just as every “um” and “ah” of the performance is
commanded by the script. A limited edition poster of the script and video
documentation of the performance will be on view after the reception.
The
rectangle and the body are the central elements in Asper’s meticulous oil
paintings. Through the intervention of the body, the rectangles that appear in
her work are not only painted, but also performed. Representation is often
positioned against performance as a secondary presentation. Yet, these
paintings seek to cross that divide and perform painting not through the
traditional means of a painterly gesture that points to the hand, but through
an actress and staging that are part of the logic of the object.
Asper
will also show Looking Forward, a video in which two arms
present letters through two rectangular holes. The letters spell out a sentence
in which each word appears simultaneously, using the temporal dimension of
video to rethink the linear structure of language. Asper’s body of work in
particular addresses the void and encounters with nothingness, as does the
austere 1966 black and white production of Bergman’s Persona.
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