FLAT Susan Black
Past Exhibitions exhibition
Press release
Peres Projects is pleased to announce the West Coast premiere of recent videos by Susan Black.
Black's videos are primarily concerned with neighborhoods and architecture. In exploring her ongoing concerns, she has developed a vocabulary dotted with architectural landscapes seen through mesmerizing video footage which inform and distort the reality of places near and far. Her debut at peres projects will feature 2 new works, FLAT and American Classic as well as the West Coast debut of Heaven on Earth (most recently exhibited at the 2002 Whitney Biennial).
FLAT, filmed entirely in Amsterdam, breaks down cliché expectations about a place as it portrays Amsterdam not as a city full of quaint old canal houses but instead reveals a more typical architecture found in and around the city. Apartment flat after apartment flat bring a geometric framework of color across the screen, spotlighting architecture which reflects the high density population of the Netherlands. This highly patterned footage builds a rhythm which Black echoes in the soundtrack which is a remix of Iggy Pop, Fischer Spooner, Suicide, Dot Allison's "Substance" and Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk". American Classic presents a quirky, yet proud America while Heaven on Earth, filmed in a retirement community in Palm Springs, California, shows an inverted, single, long tracking shot of bungalows and neatly tended gardens.
Black's works have been seen in national and international venues throughout the world, including the 2002 Whitney Biennial; Bellwether Gallery, NY (2000, 2001); " Video Bus", ArtBasel/Liste, Switzerland, Berlin, Germany, and Madrid, Spain (2001-2002); The Bass Museum, Miami, Florida, (2001); Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Germany, (2001); P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY (2000-2001); Seventh Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba, (2000), World Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam Planetarium, Netherlands (2000), Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY (2000), and Lisson Gallery, London, U.K. (1998).
Black, born in Connecticut in 1964, now lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. She studied Cognitive Science at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and was a fellow at the Skowhegan School of Art in Maine. In October, she will have another solo show at Bellwether Gallery in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), New York.