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For her new exhibition at Richard Saltoun in London, Perach has made a series of sculptures and works on paper that respond to the 1817 ETA Hoffman story The Sandman, about a love triangle between a man, his fiancee and an automaton. There is a moment in the story when the automaton, Olympia, is singing in public and glitches, behaving strangely and revealing to the audience that she is only a machine. Inspired by this moment, Perach has made two identical sculptures in the shape of Victorian dresses that will be activated in the gallery space: one by a human hidden inside, and one by a machine. Perach wants to explore how viewers will respond to the disjuncture – the glitch – of realising that they can’t immediately tell which is which. Written by Eliza Goodpasture for The Guardian
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The paired sculptures could be interpreted as representing Nathaniel’s two love interests in “The Sandman”: Olympia and Clara, his fiancée since childhood. The latter is presented as a paragon of Enlightenment-era rationality, cheerfully and unremittingly sane in her continued assurances to Nathaniel that his fears are all in his mind. “The dichotomy between rationality and intuition, the mind and the body, is a link in a lot of my work,” Perach said. For the exhibition, she worked with a team of recurring collaborators—including choreographer Luigo Ambrosio and composer Laima Leyton—to develop a performance in which the two figures engage in a kind of pas de deux. One of the bodies is worn by a live performer, Maria Sole Montaci, while the other is animated using robotics. Written by Gabrielle Schwarz for Artsy
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Solo exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery is on view 15 May - 24 June 2025.
