Das Parfum
Alex Berns
May 15\u2013June 13, 2026
New York <\/p>\n
Various clusters of cells between the brain and eyes are organized in specific hierarchies to process complex external information. Antonia Lucy Gehnrich\u2019s sole work on view,\u00a0Variable Floor Sculpture (Das Parfum) (2026), in her exhibition at Alex Berns, features 231 glass mirrors arranged in a rectangle on the gallery\u2019s black carpeted floor with 2,000 individual vintage perfume bottles placed on top, taxing our vision at a cellular level. The crystalline vessels are difficult to grasp visually, their multitude doubled in the reflections that stretch for more than 17 feet across the room. The challenging yet compelling form makes the show one of the strongest gallery shows by a living artist that I\u2019ve seen this spring, but its conceptual underpinnings are less developed.<\/p>\n
The press release calls the work a metonym for both Robert Smithson\u2019s Corner Mirror with Coral (1969) and Rob Pruitt\u2019s Cocaine Buffet (1998). Whether and how an artwork can be a metonym is a broader issue; however, likening it to Smithson and Pruitt is not appropriate for how Gehnrich\u2019s work actually functions. Smithson\u2019s \u201cNon-sites,\u201d which he began in 1968 and sometimes feature mirrors on the ground with objects taken from the natural world, are indoor earthworks, abstract mappings of places outside the gallery. After conducting a search for Pruitt\u2019s Cocaine Buffet to refamiliarize myself with the work, I discovered it merely looks like a line of cocaine across a 16-foot mirror.<\/p>\n
The presence of a mirror on the floor in Smithson\u2019s and Pruitt\u2019s artworks is not an apt comparison for Variable Floor Sculpture (Das Parfum) (2026), which uses mirrors with greater potency. Gehnrich\u2019s work is wonderfully systematic, emphasizing modularity and fetishization of the bottles atop her reflective surfaces. These older flacons are tiny, pinky finger-sized vessels that appear more precious en masse. Gehnrich\u2019s conceit aligns more closely with artists like Walter De Maria, whose highly finished artworks, especially \u201cThe Equal Area Series\u201d or 360\u02da I Ching\/64 Sculptures (1981), also extend multiples of similar, but not identical, fetishized objects outward into space. Unlike De Maria, though, Gehnrich\u2019s implementation of mirrors expands space by creating an inverted pool below, littered with a variety of perfume bottles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Das Parfum Alex Berns May 15\u2013June 13, 2026New York Various clusters of cells between the brain and eyes…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":856902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,1037,37595,35617,37596,2677,1022,37598,37599,37594,392,10929,3607,1020,975,405,37600,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,37597,37601,1148,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-856901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-art","tag-art-books","tag-art-critic","tag-art-reviews","tag-artists","tag-books","tag-brooklyn-art","tag-brooklyn-culture","tag-contemporary-art","tag-culture","tag-dance","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-art-scene","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-phong-bui","tag-poetry","tag-theater","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116724467364195303","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}