Collection
Black America
Installed at the Jerwood Space, 171 Union Street, London, SE1 0LJ
Joel Perlman (b. 1943)
Black America
steel
2.7m high
1968
Montgomery Trust accession 2010
installed at the Jerwood Space May 2010
Perlman has been creating complex sculptures out of steel, bronze, and aluminum since the early 1970's. While minimalism was the predominant style of his generation, Perlman chose to push his forms into ever-more complicated, gravity defying, configurations. Though he shares certain qualities with his peers, Richard Serra and Mark di Suervo, Perlman always investigates with originality. He expands, rather than appropriates, enriching the viewers experience of industrial materials.
In Black America we can see Perlman's craftmanship, the connection welds are left exposed. Perlman makes hand made pieces from man-made materials, recalling a past era of foundries, shipyards and iron works. To this he adds his own virtuosity as the inflexible, weighty steel elements that make up Black America appear to tumble dynamically through the air.
Black America was made during Perlman's time at the Central School of Art in London (now part of St. Martin's) where he was teaching in l968. During the 1970s Pearlman was exploring architectonic shapes and was particularly interested in minimalism, often using repeats of a similar shape, as is the case in Black America.
'I suppose that the big irony of the piece is why is Black America painted white? It was originally black, but when I saw it sited in its beautiful garden in London, I used my artist's perogitive and changed the color. The title was more descriptive than political and I am most involved in the relationship between the work and the site... There was an irony in a piece called black and painted white so I went with it.'
Provenance:
Axiom Gallery.
bought from Nigel Greenwood Gallery 1995 by
Montgomery Sculpture Trust