A Free-Flowing Geometry

A FREE-FLOWING GEOMETRY Lisa Jaye Young Penelope Price, Tessellation,John Gibson Gallery, New York athematics is a language similar to art, a system of symbols and premises basing its expression on a series of equations or concepts. It is a discipline traditionally considered antithetical to the language of art and stereotyped as oppositional to creativity. Controlled by the left brain and the analytic, temporal, symbolic faculties, the language of mathematics is linear and systematic whereas art has long been considered spatial, independent , and free-flowing. Both science and art have traditionally been suspended in a state of semi-isolation from each other, each commanding a certain amount of respect from the other, but nonetheless mutually antagonistic. Contemporary art and installation, filtered through the Duchampian lens and focused on concept or idea, rather than pictorial representation, stresses that the system of thought or the logic of the work is central to its success. Idea as art. This emphasis on the concept behind the work or the system of thought provoking the expression of the final product, I believe, serves to reduce the gap between science and the arts with the understanding that both spheres take root in an original equation. Both find solace or an outlet via the establishment of a systematic operating concept, an equation. Each discipline simply expresses the equation using a different symbolic system. The site-specific installation/dance arrangement entitled Tessellation by New York-based artist Penelope Price, which was performed in August 1994 at the John Gibson Gallery, seemed to marry these two systems. The order or systematic sense of the performance is at first mistaken for free-flowing movement and expression for the sake of expression. However, through the use of repetition of movement and the establishment of a pattern, the piece begins to inform the viewer of its plan, its definite order, or its geometry. The subject of the arrangement which is based on what the artist describes as "The Fall from Grace," combines dance, sculpture, video, and experimental sound. The gallery space is divided into "conceptual" and "actual " space by a membrane of red, weblike threads. A video monitor with the repeated outline of the artist's body U 59 performing a series of headstands is placed in the "actual" space. As the central performer, Price delineates the action in the "conceptual" space via the motion of her own body in relationship to carefully placed sculptures and to the other performersShin Shimokawa (percussion), Steve Vitiello (electric guitar), and Britta Schbnbrunn (dancer). The artist-protagonist combines dance and primitive movement interacting with various stations or islands of sculpture set up within the gallery. She visits these isolated stations or islands performing deliberate tasks at each. The artist's body interacts with the sculptures, set up like isolated chapels of ritual, with a rote understanding, as if automated or compelled by some outside force. These sculptures also exist a priori of the performance as integral elements to a body of work developed by Price. They are simultaneously interactive symbols from within the ephemeral performance and separate sculptural entities with an ongoing existence and relationship to her oeuvre. The sculptures become symbols themselves which make up the equation of the performance. One such sculptural island consists of a mirror placed on a chair draped with a red veil (this sculpture is titled, Chair for the Student of Life). On the chair is placed a pillow on which sits a tin of gold paint which the artist proceeds to spread all over her own torso, neck, legs, face, and even feet as if in preparation of a spiritual journey.Another station of the performance is set up on site as the artist creates a painting on the wall with her gold-painted feet, while performing headstands with her feet against the wall. The central and repeated gesture 60 U PERFORMING ARTS JOURNAL 49 throughout the movement from island to island takes place within an imaginary figure eight at the center of the space, to which the artist systematically returns on her peregrinations throughout the space in order to perform headstands (positioning her legs as an inverted swastika, representing the human inability to comprehend all four directions...