{"id":169,"date":"2008-03-02T04:42:23","date_gmt":"2008-03-02T04:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/?p=169"},"modified":"2008-10-22T04:48:34","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T04:48:34","slug":"mai-thu-perret-%e2%80%9can-evening-of-the-book-and-other-stories%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/02\/mai-thu-perret-%e2%80%9can-evening-of-the-book-and-other-stories%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"Mai-Thu Perret, \u201cAn Evening of the Book and Other Stories\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

For \u2018Time Out New York\u2019 Magazine<\/p>\n

\"Mai-Thu<\/a>
Mai-Thu Perret, \u201cAn Evening of the Book and Other Stories\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mai-Thu Perret\u2019s first solo exhibition in New York aims to mine past avant-garde movements for newly provocative images and ideas, but provides little of either.\u00a0 What you do get are lots of arcane references underscoring the video, sculpture and diagrams.\u00a0 Take for instance, the show\u2019s centerpiece video of young female dancers in utilitarian garb which, according to Perret, is inspired by artist Varvara Stephanova\u2019s set designs for Vitalii Zhemchuzhnyi\u2019s 1924 agitprop theater piece \u2018An Evening of the Book.\u2019 You wonder whether knowing any of this is worth the piece\u2019s slim rewards.<\/p>\n

The front gallery offers an oddball assortment of artworks, including a ball of neon tubing looks like a wadded up (rejected?) version of props the Geneva-based Perret has previously shown, a carpet with a Rorschach pattern and large wall diagrams of dance steps.\u00a0 But nothing quite sums up the pointlessness of this show better than the eight gigantic, cardboard commas\u00a0 – which tellingly resemble quotation marks \u2013 that line a wall leading to Perret\u2019s take on Zhemchuzhnyi\u2019s homage to revolutionary literature.<\/p>\n

The same commas, along with a huge blank-paged book, appear in the video as part of a set, around which the aforementioned cadre of young women performs synchronized movements that see-saw between energy and lethargy.\u00a0 Apparently unable to sustain the stamina to convert past ideology to present-day meaning, the characters convey the disappointing message that such attempts are better in theory than practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For \u2018Time Out New York\u2019 Magazine Mai-Thu Perret\u2019s first solo exhibition in New York aims to mine past avant-garde movements for newly provocative images and ideas, but provides little of either.\u00a0 What you do get are lots of arcane references underscoring the video, sculpture and diagrams.\u00a0 Take for instance, the show\u2019s centerpiece video of young … <\/p>\n

Read more “Mai-Thu Perret, \u201cAn Evening of the Book and Other Stories\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[8,18,9,15,14,13,12,17,10,16,11],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-contemporary","tag-critic","tag-exhibition","tag-gallery","tag-new-york","tag-photography","tag-sculpture","tag-tour","tag-visual-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BDOD-2J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}