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Alix Pearlstein at Artemis Greenberg Van Doren - New York - Episode, video installation
Art in America, March, 2003 by Gregory Volk
At first glance, Alix Pearlstein's video installation Episode suggested a cheesy family sitcom mixed with elements of improvisational dance. Dual projections on opposite walls of the gallery's elongated space showed the same scenes shot from slightly different vantages. Two women and two men (all actors), dressed in around-the-house clothing, cavort about the same white room. These characters engage in physical gags and mimicry, display both affection and competition, and twine together in various configurations, only to pull apart, as each negotiates her or his way between individuality and group identity. All this activity takes place in silence, apart from some weird sounds on the audio channel, at once bouncy and vaguely eerie. The endlessly shifting physical interaction among the characters constitutes the story, and the more time one spent with Pearlstein's looped 10-minute video, the more psychologically complex this interaction seemed, especially once you realized you were looking at a version of family life, with a father, a mother, a teenage daughter and a teenage son.
The characters' facial expressions and body postures are in constant flux, and evocative moments abound. The mother languidly reclines on the floor, while the daughter, in the background, does the same--perhaps to mimic, but also to try on for size a potential adult life with an implicit sexuality that's both awkward and engaging. Certain glances are frankly tender, while others smolder. Exasperation is evident, and it seems as if it could shade into violence, but love and thoughtfulness are also present. Roughhousing between father and son conjures playtime stretching way back into childhood, but also psychological combat and one-upmanship. At one point, with his head obscured, the father stumbles about blindly, searching for the others, who delightedly evade him. This seems all in good fun, but then again maybe not: he's a father in disarray, at once powerful and clueless, whose kids are beyond his grasp, and whose wife is likewise unavailable.
The perfectly blank white room in which all the action takes place is also perfectly ambiguous. This could be a spotless home, a hospital, a studio set, a dreamscape or an insane asylum. The slightly different angles from which the two projections were shot make for choppy viewing. As you shift your gaze from one to the other, you're always catching up, missing something or seeing the same thing differently--an apt metaphor for family life. Most of us spend a lifetime trying to make sense of what happened, and is happening, in our families. There's nothing overtly autobiographical about Episode, but Pearlstein has brought a world of deeply felt personal experience to her investigation of who we are when we're at home.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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