Miri Segal
Circular Acts

May 20, 2001 – September 3, 2001

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is pleased to present Circular Acts by Israeli artist Miri Segal. In this exhibition, video installations feature deceptively simple optical illusions that locate the possibility of interaction with a work of art directly in the eye. In her work, Segal draws attention to the complex functions of the eye and the mind, while commenting on the promises of the "man/machine" hybrid.

Segal was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1965 and currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. Her work was selected for exhibition by P.S.1 Director Alanna Heiss during her travels to Israel in 1999. In this first New York exhibition, Segal develops a relationship between three video objects. In Vapor-The Poetic Principle (1999), an image of trees in a storm is projected onto the whirling blades of a fan. The physical connection between the viewer and this work provides a counterpoint to the viewer's experience of Closed Circuit (2000). In this work, a video and sound installation, two images of a young woman are projected onto a glass plane from opposite ends of the gallery: a three-dimensional image paradoxically trapped in two dimensions.

Pursuing her interest in perception and technology, Miri Segal has created Foreshadowing (2001) specially for P.S.1. In the artist's words, Foreshadowing "attempts to incorporate and mediate the opposing stances" achieved in the above works.  Also installed in P.S.1's basement boiler room is Figuring Out (2000), a projection onto a mirror. 

Segal's work has been featured in Miri Segal at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1998, a group show and a one-person exhibition at Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv, 1999; 4 Video Artists at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2000; and Mixing Memory and Desire, Kunstmuseum, Luzern, Switzerland, 2000.

Circular Acts is organized by Assistant Curator Larissa Harris with Project Manager Jeffrey Uslip. This exhibition is made possible with public funds from the New York-Israel Cultural Cooperation Commission, a joint venture of the State of New York, George Pataki-Governor, and the State of Israel. Special thanks to the Consulate General of Israel, the Department of Cultural Affairs, New York, and Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv.