Gallery Links:

Jim Campbell
William Kentridge
Mariko Mori
Pepón Osorio
Tony Oursler
Nam June Paik
Peter Sarkisian

Peter Sarkisian
Hover, 1999
mixed media and video projection
35 x 35 x 30 inches, 11:30 minutes
courtesy I-20 Gallery, New York

Hover taps into elemental human themes that allude to pivotal moments in the human life cycle. Beginning with an opaque, minimalist cube that suddenly transforms itself into an illusion of a transparent space enclosing two figures, Hover, like the work of Tony Oursler, straddles the boundary between sculpture and video. Projected onto each of the cube's visible surfaces are a woman and child seen from five sides: front, back, left, right and top. Illuminating different views of the same figures on a cube is perhaps a visual pun on cubist painting which sought to depict multiple views of an object at once. The figures move about, feeling the cube's interior with their hands as the speed of their gestures gradually increases to a frantic pace.

By abandoning specific narrative in favor of simple, vague settings, Sarkisian builds upon our collective investment in the symbolism of the mother and child. These range from the persistence of our earliest childhood memories to religious imagery of the Madonna and Christ child and mythic references to Venus and Cupid. In Hover, these peaceful associations give way to others: prison, anxiety and suffocation. Sarkisian contrasts the security of the womb with the frantic pace of adult life by deftly combining spatial and temporal elements.

Amy Cappellazzo, Making Time: Considering Time as a Material in Contemporary Video & Film (Lake Worth, Fla.: Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, 2000), 71.

Peter Sarkisian, telephone interview by David Hart, 4 May 2000.

Suggested Links:

art-word.com
A review of Sarkisian's video installation at University of California at San Diego
post-gazette.com
A review of Sarkisian's work from 1999