A solo exhibition opening this evening of May 7, 2015 in New York City is entitled “The Land Behind” and features work by Sibylle Peretti, a German artist based in New Orleans. New York's Heller Gallery will offer an intimate opportunity to explore the artist’s personal world of fragility and translucency, an environment inhabited by fairy tales and dreams. Peretti's work mines the connection between children and nature, delving into both as symbols of innocence and vulnerable purity. The opening reception will run this evening from 6 - 8 PM and the exhibition remains on view through June 3, 2015.
Peretti grew up surrounded by traditional German glassmaking focused on the production of high-end decorative and functional glass objects. During her studies at the State School for Glass Making in Zwiesel, Germany, she developed needed skills like enameling, engraving, cutting and designing glass that she is using right now. With the feeling that she wants to push the material a bit further, Peretti went to study sculpture and painting at the Fine Arts Academy of Cologne.
In her artist's statement, Peretti admits that most of her work made in Germany explored the dialogue between idea and material, between creating layers of meaning and the object. Through the years, her skills in glass significantly increased. Today, she is able to explore the lack of harmony between human beings, nature, and our inability to achieve a unity with the natural world.
Figures of children are often found in Peretti's work, there as apparent ambassadors to hidden worlds, full of harmony and consistency with nature. Those representatives of tenderness, purity, and vulnerability are an artist’s personal solution to heal the ills of the modern world. For this she is using opaque white glass to achieve a surface that looks like a wax skin, with the feeling that there is something underneath. This sensitivity moves people to start thinking about their own identity and connection to the natural world. Creating a real empathy with her viewers is one of the objectives that drives the artist to create her works.
Peretti divides her time between New Orleans and Cologne, Germany. She is the recipient of numerous awards including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation and most recently awarded the United States Artists Friends Fellowship.
IF YOU GO:
Gallery hours:
Tuesday through Saturday 11 AM - 6 PM
& by appointment.