About the Artist

Born in 1961 in Detroit, Michigan, Devorah Sperber graduated from Colorado’s Art Institute in 1981 and Regis University in 1987. She moved to New York City in 1989 and now divides her time between studios in Manhattan and Woodstock, New York.

Since 1999, Sperber has created a series of large-scale installations and multi-part works, which utilize pixilated, photo-based representation in formats that fluctuate between representation and abstraction. In 2005, Sperber represented the Brooklyn Museum and the United States at the Ljubljana Print Biennale, for which she created new thread-spool works. A solo exhibition featuring these works was on display at the Brooklyn Museum from January 26 to June 17, 2007, in The Eye of the Artist: The Work of Devorah Sperber. The exhibit included full-scale re-creations of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (29 feet wide) and Mona Lisa (30 × 21 inches). The concept was based on the technology of print-making and how mechanical reproductions alter images and the scale of artworks as they exist in “the mind’s eye”. She selected The Last Supper and Mona Lisa because they are two of the most recognizable and reproduced images in the history of art.

The works on view at the Brooklyn Museum, along with new works, have since traveled to the Oda-Park Foundation in The Netherlands and the Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to Kidspace at MASS MoCA, in 2008–2009 Sperber’s work will travel to the Boise Art Museum in Idaho; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee. She will be featured in the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Public works by Sperber can be seen in New York City’s One Penn Plaza; Centro Medico Train Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Independence of the Seas (maiden voyage, May 2008). Regional
exhibitions have included Sperber’s work, most recently at the Albany
International Airport Gallery, Albany, New York, and the University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York.

PAST EXHIBITION

Interpretations: Devorah Sperber

March 27–September 1, 2008

For most, the act of seeing is an unremarkable event — few people give much thought to the mechanics behind this commonplace activity. But, for New York-based artist Devorah Sperber, how the brain interprets visual information forms the centerpiece of a fascinating artistic practice. Interpretations: Devorah Sperber features sculptures by Sperber which explore how the brain interprets visual information, suggesting surprising bridges between classic paintingtechniques and modern digital technology.

At first glance Sperber’s sculptures appear to be multi-colored< abstractions composed from volumes of craft materials like spools of thread, chenille stems, map tacks, gem stones, or marker caps. For instance, Sperber’s homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper comprises 20,736 spools of thread which create a life-sized mural that is almost 30 feet wide. When viewed through special optical devices like a clear acrylic sphere or a convex mirror, however, recognizable images from art history suddenly emerge.

Sperber crafts her works so the viewing process mimics the way the eyes and brain interpret visual stimuli. Many of her abstracted images are constructed upside-down and backwards, which is the way the eyes absorb information. The optical device functions as a brain, condensing, inverting, and reversing raw color and value into something identifiable. Upside-down and backward composition alludes not only to the biological mechanics of sight, but also to the mechanics of the camera obscura, a projector-like device some art historians believe many Old Masters may have used. The construction method most apparent in Sperber’s work — using individual bits of color to assemble a larger image — is her nod to modern technology. A computer program breaks her chosen image into pixels, the building block of digital imaging technology. She translates the pixels into sculpture — her spools of thread, chenille stems or gem stones function as three-dimensional pixels. Her mirrors and lenses operate not only as human eyes and brains but as computers, “zooming out” and pulling the colors together, reforming the picture.