Mia Pearlman imitates weather patterns in her art, making the cloud formations we witness from afar seem tangible through her cut-paper installations. The artists says she works from an intuitive process, starting out with India ink drawings of loose lines and shapes. These become the contours of the clouds as she trims away negative space. “These cut paper pieces form the final installation, created on site by in a 2-3 day dance with chance and control,” Pearlman wrote in an email to Hi-Fructose. “Existing only for the length of an exhibition, this weightless world totters on the brink of being and not being, continually in flux. It is my mediation on creation, destruction, and the transient nature of reality.”
Her most recent paper installation, ONE, which was on view at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in 2012-2013, deals with nature as an independent force indifferent to humans. With one side bright and flowing upward and the other, darkened and flowing downward, the installation seems to oppose the notion of “good” or “bad” weather, instead presenting the storm and the calm as a cycle.
ONE, site-specific installation at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2012-2013)
Penumbra, on view at Plaatsmaken in Arnhem, Netherlands (2010)
INRUSH, site-specific installation at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (2009-2010)
