Pearl Vision, 2016

Basel 2018
Pearl Vision

Gavin Brown's enterprise

Video/Film
Video on curved wall, color, sound
‘Pearl Vision focuses on a faceless performer sitting with a snare drum fit snugly between his alternately red-panted and naked legs. The drummer is no master of the instrument – he lazily taps along to the song purring through his Sony headphones – and yet the drum produces a variety of effects in addition to sound. It gives off beautiful chrome reflections; its mechanical parts open and close; at one point it becomes its own animated avatar. Indeed the brand of the drum, Pearl Vision, points to a synesthetic confusion of the senses; it is a musical instrument, but it promotes vision and a pearlescent one at that. The warped crotch shots that form the video’s leitmotif, however, suggest that this object and its attendant effects, as with so many of the objects that surround us today, ultimately speak to us libidinally, in a language of sensation that overwhelms any one particular sense. The drum’s myriad effects are meant to turn us on. Such stimulation, however, often takes place in a solitary space – the drummer sits alone, slowly keeping the beat.’– Alex Kitnick, 2013