Devorah Sperber
FORM FOLLOWS PERCEPTION
Born in Detroit, Michigan
Works in New York, New York
Devorah Sperber's work explores all aspects of perception – physical, intellectual, intuitive, and emotional. But her primary interest is perception of the optical kind – how visual information about an object is received, reflected, transmitted, reassembled and understood. By creating work that addresses the mysteries of optical perception, Sperber elevates this scientific and biological process to the level of poetics.
Appropriating images ranging from old master paintings to natural landscapes to iconic objects, Sperber reduces them into pixels, then re-creates them using unexpected materials. Thousands of colored Pantone marker caps are the material for her floor sculpture Lie Like a Rug – a radically simplified version of an intricately patterned carpet meant to be viewed through a convex mirror placed on an adjacent wall. Also in Manuf®actured is Sperber’s wall piece After Warhol which utilizes her signature material – the thread spool. Guided by similar square proportions, the thread spool is an unlikely but surprisingly successful analog of the pixel, an apt material for the three-dimensional expression of two-dimensional images. An acrylic viewing sphere invites viewers to complete each image using their brain’s own perceptual capabilities.
Each of Sperber’s pieces is created by hand in the time-honored craft world tradition. Like a designer, she begins by developing a set plan for the design of the entire piece. Then she begins the calming, meditative production phase in which natural kinesthetic intelligence engages the body with the mind. The resulting work is highly technical and conceptual, yet surprisingly accessible at the same time.
WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
Devorah Sperber, Lie Like a Rug, 2000–01; 18,000 Letraset marker caps on flexible canvas, rubber edging; Collection of the artist
Devorah Sperber, After Warhol, 2008; 698 spools of thread,
stainless-steel ball chain and hanging apparatus, clear acrylic
sphere, metal stand; Collection of the artist
