Devorah Sperber: Threads of Perception

New York artist Devorah Sperber combines commonplace materials with simple optical devices to investigate the connections between art, perception and technology. Her works address the complex relationship between the way we think we see and the way that the brain actually processes images. Her most recent works examine famous paintings from art history. Sperber uses the computer to pixelate the images and then reproduces the pixels with thousands of spools of colored thread. She then inverts the spool-constructed pictures so that the image is viewed up side down and recognizable only when viewed through an acrylic sphere. To the naked eye the thread spool sculpture appears as patterns of color, but when viewed through the specially designed acrylic sphere, the images spring into focus. Sperber's works were recently presented at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Brooklyn Museum and featured in articles in the New Yorker, the New York Times and Sculpture Magazine.