Sibylle Peretti "Thaw"
Heller Gallery
This event has ended.
Sibylle Peretti explores human failings and our lack of harmony with nature, combining images of children and elements of nature. In her work she strives to uncover hidden worlds in which a harmony can exist and heal. Children, who represent vulnerability, are placed ‘in a diaphanous universe of potential solutions and revived through a new and intimate, perhaps mystical reconnection with nature.’
The children in the Thaw series appear to be awakening from a dormant stage. Peretti uses the inherent properties and metaphors of glass to underscore and magnify her essential message. The work ranges from cast sculptures to panels built from photographic images, drawing on tissue paper, engraving on glass or Plexiglas as well as its occasional mirroring. White glass is used throughout the Thaw series to create a sense of peace, vulnerability, softness and subtle depth – to suggest life.
The central piece of the exhibition is Snow Child, a life-size reclining figure cast of white glass which is overlaid with a transparent skin of clear glass to give a sense of purity and innocence. Two-dimensional works, such as Dew and The Hawk, are multi-media collages which layer drawing, painting and photographic images with engraving, mirroring and glass slumping. While her work hovers between subjects of scientific curiosity, fairy tales and dreams, Peretti uses images of children to ‘open our eyes to a mysterious sensibility we may have lost.’ Her children-protagonists are ‘immaculate in their innocence, transmitting a savage view of our own isolation.’ She examines the child’s identity in a world of adverse layers. She says: “the overlay and containment of irreconcilable natures - of disease and beauty, of intimacy and of distance and of innocence and knowledge - have typified the search I have found most important in my work.”
Sibylle Peretti received her MFA in painting and sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne, Germany. Her work is represented in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, Canada; Museum fur Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt, Germany; the American Glass Museum in Millville, NJ and the Glazenhuis in Lommel, Belgium as well as other public and private collections in the USA, Canada and Europe. She has been the recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Media
Schedule
from June 02, 2012 to June 30, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-06-02 from 15:00 to 17:00