| Illustrations, sculptures, really, for a phantasmagorical story that happens to feature little old you. A virtual—“can this be possible?”—reality-goggled trove? No, it’s “Caught from Below,” Sarah Perry’s new work at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art featuring 17 pieces cobbled together from Spanish moss and English house sparrow feathers, snake vertebrae and ribs, pigeon feet and millipedes, not to mention steel, brass, hair, acrylic, glass and sealants. The pieces don’t so much startle you as, once their idea’s been broached, seem like the most inevitable thing in the world. Then you can’t help but see the world in Perry’s quirky, idiosyncratic, eccentric way. |  |
Sarah Perry – James Scarborough
Illustrations, sculptures, really, for a phantasmagorical story that happens to feature little old you.
A virtual—“can this be possible?”—reality-goggled trove?
No, it’s “Caught from Below,” Sarah Perry’s new work at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art featuring 17 pieces cobbled together from Spanish moss and English house sparrow feathers, snake vertebrae and ribs, pigeon feet and millipedes, not to mention steel, brass, hair, acrylic, glass and sealants.
The pieces don’t so much startle you as, once their idea’s been broached, seem like the most inevitable thing in the world. Then you can’t help but see the world in Perry’s quirky, idiosyncratic, eccentric way. Tell me, does the world need love, sweet love or something else through which to make sense of what’s going on?
Inevitable? Tree of Heaven. A branch into which Perry has fashioned and then wedged a bird’s nest. An egg. You still with me? The egg cracks to herald the arrival of a chickadee. But it’s not a chickadee. It’s a newborn baby. What came first, the savior or the egg?
Your first reaction. Why not? In fact, as you walk around the show, enraptured by these weird and wonderful incursions into not just the third dimension but also the very magma of your poetic soul, you intone the mantra, “Why not?”
Leap of Faith. A Man of Sorrows swan dives à la Yves Klein off the handle of a soup ladle. Except he’s not diving, he’s sort of skewered, and the red coagulant pooled at the bottom of the ladle looks like blood. Why not?
All in One Basket. A bingo cage filled with bone marrow eggs. The crapshoot of artificial insemination. Why not?
My favorite, Summon Up. A spigot sticks out of the wall. Out of the spigot spills a coil of worms. A fish raises its head to eat said meal. Why not?
The pieces look minimal. They seduce you the way a sunset seduces you. Simple, majestic and all-there. Miraculous if you sit there and think about it. You don’t, do you?
The work reminds you—for you do need to be reminded—of the ubiquity of enchantment: the miracle of birth, of life, of death, of rebirth. The whole oneiric cycle. It’s all around us.
In execution, Perry’s vision is unique—the components of the work are as simple as can be—and yet its message is so dang obvious: let’s scuttle off to Pee Wee’s Playhouse of pagan pleasure.
No saints, no saviors, no ideologies were traduced, vilified or dissed in the production of the work. Trust me. The work is just, so, oh, drat, what is the word? Oh yeah. Breathless.
It leaves you gasping. It makes you want to click the heels of your ruby slippers and pray “I want to live here, I want to live here,” until you walk out the door and it occurs to you that you already do.
