Peter Sarkisian

I-20, New York
Through April 16

In Peter Sarkisian's new video installation, Strand, three four-sided pillars inhabit a darkened gallery, each apparently transparent. At regular intervals naked figures drop feet first through the inside of a pillar as if falling down a chute. Some of the men and women plunge past with arms at their sides, others with arms raised or knees bent in a fetal position. Some of the figures face the viewer and others turn away, but all fall through the columns and into oblivion, like Alice down the rabbit hole. The falling bodies evoke loss and liberation, anxiety and awe.

A muted cacophony of voices accompanies the action. Occasionally an audible phrase emerges from the murmurs—such as "get her up in the morning" or "that started a fire"—but these lucid snippets recede quickly into the miasma of sound. With this twelve-channel video projection—each side of each column displays a different image—Sarkisian continues his efforts to liberate video from the tyranny of the monitor and its association with broadcast television, which long ago replaced religion as the opiate of the masses. Sarkisian has remarked that "The frame is the big whistle blower of video. What I try to do is embody the image through the union of projection and form, so that it is brought as close to being as possible; so that it starts to operate with real presence."

Sarkisian's approach recalls the talking heads and mumbling eyeballs of Tony Oursler, who similarly projects image onto object. But the macabre humor of Oursler's installations is a far cry from the hushed solemnity of Strand. In tenor, Strand is far closer to the work of Bill Viola, with whom the younger artist shares a penchant for metaphor and the metaphysical—Viola's recent show in New York also featured a projection of a plunging body. Like Viola, in whose shadow this work hovers, Sarkisian has developed a sophisticated technological and visual language to suggest the depths of the subconscious. Strand is like a lucid dream and its free falling imagery mirrors the fleeting nature of experience itself.




Andrea K. Scott