Artist Jaanika Peerna together with Estonian Consul General Eva-Maria Liimets, the Director of the Kentler Gallery Florence Neal and Program Director Sallie Mize. Photo by Umru Rothenberg
Artist Jaanika Peerna created a room-size drawing installation in the large space of Kentler International Drawing Space which consists of works of very different scale and presence. There are tiny framed drawings, large drawings hanging from the ceiling, reflective mylar films in a corner of the gallery, a couple of ceiling-to-floor wall pieces and one very large mylar work suspended between the ceiling and the floor. The artist uses simple materials for the entire installation: graphite, color pencils, mylar and reflective film.
Her large scale dense surfaces of freehand straight line drawings have the energy of falling liquid matter (water or oil), while small drawings try to contain turbulent puffs of air. The already dynamic surfaces of her drawings get further animated by the movement of people in the gallery space—the hanging drawings swing in the air and the large suspended work might even create some sound as it rustles while people walk beneath the work.
Peerna’s installation pays homage to the recent flooding in the neighborhood caused by Hurricane Sandy, where water pushed over borders of land and house walls in the Red Hook area and even into the cellar of the gallery.
On the occasion of the exhibition a 136 page book called ”Jaanika Peerna: Storms and Silences” was published by Terra Nova Books, with 65 color illustrations of Peerna’s recent work in drawing and performance.
“For this exhibition, in which dense clusters of vertical lines predominate, a singular performative act, itself a wonder to behold, precedes each piece,” writes Taney Roniger about Peerna’s exhibition on the Kentler’s website.
“This whole-body gesture, which is enacted repeatedly for each work, begins with a clearing: First the artist must undergo a kind of self-emptying, lest the discursive noise of the mind interfere. Above all, openness to the vicissitudes of the present is crucial. Thus prepared, Peerna gathers a fistful of pencils in both hands and stands before a large sheet of Mylar temporarily affixed to a hard surface. Then, extending her arms to their terminal length and pushing her pencil tips against the Mylar, she snaps her body down to the floor in one swift stroke. Essentially an act of freefall leavened by friction, the movement produces a bold graphic streak that cannot be attributed to the artist’s agency alone. Rather, it is the artist in intimate contact with both her materials and the force of gravity that is its source.”
Installation with Peerna’s works (graphite on Mylar) at the Kentler Drawing Space. Photo: Etienne Frossard
“Allusions to water in all its forms—liquid, solid and vapor—pervade Light Matter. From the enormous falls invoked by the show’s centerpiece to the gently rolling waves that cascade down both Graphite Falls to the ubiquitous evocations of fluid flow throughout, the presence of this notoriously dense substance is rich with significance. Growing up in Soviet-era Estonia, Peerna lived on the edge of a continent marked by repression and isolation and a sea just across which lay freedom and the plentitude of the larger world. One can imagine the artist as a child gazing out over the crashing waves and feeling not fear of nature but the solace of a kind of aquatic contact with a much longed-for world,“ writes Taney Roniger, an artist and writer based in Brooklyn and the Catskills.
Light Matter: solo exhibition of drawing installation by Jaanika Peerna, open February 14 – March 29, 2015
Kinetic performance with Alexis Steeves and Rain Saukas March 7, 4PM
Kentler International Drawing Space
353 Van Brunt Street
Brooklyn (Red Hook), New York 11231,
tel: 718 875 2098
