Jun 23rd 2017

Aspect/Ratio is pleased to present the second gallery exhibition from Orr Menirom: “Clinton and Sanders Looking at the World and Naming Things for the First Time.” The work examines the relationship between language and public perception of world events, focusing on the recent election by utilizing appropriated footage from the CNN Democratic Presidential Debate, which took place in New York in April 2016. By presenting a series of dreamlike images, Menirom takes apart the relationship between political language and the images it conjures up, leaving the viewer to project their own associations onto the speeches own associations onto the speeches.
The work is inspired by “Deep Dream,” a machine-learning technology trained to recognize and classify visual patterns. Menirom’s video positions viewers in the role of the machine responding to visual patterns and in doing so questions the factors that shape their understandings of reality. Clinton and Sanders works as a moving Rorschach, blurring the lines between the act of identifying existing patterns and inserting new meaning into otherwise arbitrary symbols. In the wake of the 2016 election, this Rorschach test begins to unpack the process of a political ‘surprise’ by implicating its viewers – and the electorate at large – within a profound system of perceiving and naming.
Orr Menirom was born in Israel and is based in New York. Her work seeks to recontextualize meaning from our overly saturated and coded media culture. Her work has shown internationally at institutions such as The Tel Aviv Art Museum and the Des Moines Art Center and she was a recent artist-in-residence at both Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing in 2016 and the Van Eyck Academy in 2017. Orr completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 and BFA at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 2010.

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