Common Areas (detail). Courtesy of the artist.
EXHIBITION
Common Areas
Jan 9 — May 10, 2015
Location: Hearst Lobby
Organized by Jason Eppink, Associate Curator of Digital Media, and presented as part of First Look 2015.
With support from The Cultural Services of the Québec Government Office in New York
Sabrina Ratté (b. 1982, Quebec City) works with analog and digital processes, particularly video feedback, to construct sparse planes that evoke virtual landscapes and electric architecture. The resulting video is thoroughly material: soft hazy gradients, liquid feedback loops, and sparkling static that assemble into dreamlike spaces.
Common Areas, commissioned by the Museum, envelops the 50-foot-wide lobby wall with waves of brown and blue that slide and undulate to form vague corridors, pulsing panels, and electrically charged rooms. Black lines and panning frames regularly interrupt these areas, sharply undermining assumptions about the work’s dimensionality. Backed by a soundtrack from Ratté’s frequent collaborator Roger Tellier-Craig, Common Areas crackles with an eerie warmth, as hypnotic as it is elusive.
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