The Drawing Lesson, 2012
Video HD, 7´13"
Ballroom Marfa, Texas, USA
The austerity of the characters’ actions in Alix Pearlstein’s films bring to mind both contact improv and the task-based performance of Yvonne Rainer. With the high-gloss of a studio film and featuring seasoned performers with engaging faces and vivid high-definition footage, the camera constantly moves–demonstrating action through a variety of angles and distances. The film brings to the foreground our ambiguous status as spectators–as both watchers and collaborators and challenges our habits of viewing by teasing us with the possibility of narrative, even if that narrative never takes shape.
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Selected by Ballroom Marfa, Alix Pearlstein (b. 1962) works with actors and dancers to explore the sometimes ambiguous relationship between camera, viewer and subject. In The Drawing Lesson (2012), the viewer watches the participants who in turn watch each other before directing their gaze onto the viewer. Pearlstein is interested in reversing the passive relationship between the observer and the observed by turning the scrutiny back onto the viewer.
Alix Pearlstein was born in 1962 in New York. She received her B.S. from Cornell University and her M.F.A. from the State University of New York. Her works have been included in group exhibitions (Biennale de Lyon, France; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others) and also One-person exhibitions (The Kitchen, New York; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and more). Pearlstein lives in New York.