This first solo museum exhibition of Perry Hall’s work features three distinct, yet interconnected areas: Livepaintings (videos of paint in motion), Decalcomania paintings (painted canvases), and Sound Drawings (images of sound waves moving through paint). The centerpiece is a collection of Hall’s Livepaintings, in which the artist filmed the movement of paint as it is stimulated by agitation, vibration, temperature, and chance. Hall sees paint as a dynamic, time-based material; his improvisations with the medium result in a series of videos, filmed in real time and edited without any digital manipulation.
The exhibition also includes Hall’s unusual adaptation of the Decalcomania technique, invented by the German-born Surrealist, Max Ernst. It involves applying paint to a surface and then placing a piece of glass upon it; the paint is pressurized, creating an index of the forces imposed by the artist. Hall’s application resembles landscapes ranging from aerial topographies to vast communities of microscopic organisms.
The museum also commissioned Hall to complete his work-in-progress: 1,465 Sound Drawings, an ambitious project combining video and works on paper begun by the artist in 2003. In a 48-second video, sound waves from an electric bass are channeled through a vessel containing paint, creating structures and imagery that are legible as 1,465 drawings. 1,465 Sound Drawings explores the experience of synesthesia, in which one sense, such as hearing, is translated into a perception in another sense, such as sight.
