Hannah Perry’s “Viruses Worth Spreading”

Whitewall

25 May 2017

Hannah Perry‘s “Viruses Worth Spreading” is currently on view at Arsenal Contemporary in New York. On view until July 2, the exhibition of new work is set up as an experiences for the senses.

Through video, sound, installation, and sculpture, Perry plays with the theme of an auto body shop—mixing and distorting images of brute strength, industrial materials, the adolescent figure, and stereotypes of the working class. Installed in the gallery windows are sculptures of crushed car parts, foam, and latex framed by Plexiglas.

Hannah Perry 
Your Ass is Grass (And I’m Gonna Mow It)
2017
Silkcreen on aluminum, digital perplex print on Plexiglas, silkscreen on Plexiglas 
60 x 72 inches
Courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary

Perry created site-specific warped walls that give the show a somewhat labyrinthine feel of impermanence taking on an unfinished underground vibe. In Your Ass is Grass (And I’m Gonna Mow It) (2017) images of flesh silkscreened on aluminum are overlaid with a mess of text from texts that read “I’ll come to your house,” “Steal your phone,” “I’ll block all your friends,” barely legible having been crossed out, erased, or cut off.

The video Cry Daggers (2017) plays at the end of the gallery, splicing footage of driving in L.A., children performing, and Perry’s own image while stories of tumultuous relationships and encounters act as narration. Temporary seating takes the form of folded mattresses holding their shape with steel straps (like Mirror Threats), next to cloud-like expanded foam islands covered in blonde hair extensions (like Cucci Copey).

Hannah Perry
Cry Daggers
2017 HD
video
16m41s
Courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary

In “Viruses Worth Spreading,” the London-based Perry shrewdly investigates the line between public projection and private perception.

Hannah Perry lives and works in London. She received her BA from Goldsmiths College in 2009 and a MA from Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Solo exhibitions include 100 Problems, CFA, Berlin; “Mercury Retrograde,” Seventeen, London; “You’re gonna be great, Jeanine Hofland,” Amsterdam; “Hannah Perry,” Zabludowicz Collection, London. Recent institutional group-exhibitions include “I feel we think bad,” Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal; “Private Settings: Art After the Internet,” MOMA Warsaw; “New Order II,” Saatchi Gallery, London; “Stedelijk at Trouw: Contemporary Art Club – DATA,” Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Performances by the artist have been hosted at Serpentine Gallery, London; Boiler Room, London; V22, London.