Limen/Meadow (Achea Rheon), 2004 Installation and performance: newsprint paper, wood, crayons,
water-filled plaster containers, artist's body, projected video, sound in collaboration with Stephen Vitiello and Matthew Griffin. Courtesy Chelsea Art Museum, New York.
Limen/Meadow (Achea Rheon), 2004
Most of the floor surface in the gallery is covered with a large rectangular, three-dimensional "meadow" made from hundreds of layers
of newsprint paper. Several small containers with water are scattered throughout this terrain. During the initial several-hour performance the artist lies curled up on her
side in the middle of the structure, outlining her body among the paper and slowly crawls along it. The surface of the meadow gradually, layer by layer, becomes torn, darkened,
and destroyed. The drawn lines become disconnected and dispersed. During the performance, others are welcome to enter the meadow and outline their bodies. People's energies
merge with the energy of the paper, creating a sculptural environment in a constant state of change. A video camera is suspended from the ceiling and the live performance
is simultaneously projected directly onto a wall.
During the subsequent four weeks of the exhibition, the installation displays the scattered traces of the drawing action in the sculptural environment and in the edited video
images of the action. The sound permeating the space was partially composed prior to the exhibition, and mixed with life recording of the sounds of the movement of the artist's
body crushing paper, the sounds of charcoal sticks scraping the delicate surfaces of the meadow, together with the sounds of an earlier immersion in water.
"Limen (threshold) derives from Greek leimon, "meadow," and is inspired by my on-going interest in surface and boundary as represented by human skin, paper, and the surfaces
of earth and water. The newsprint paper is a vulnerable material that brittle and easily crumbles over time. Achea Rheon (River of Sorrow) is one of the five rivers dividing Hades
from the world of the living. It appears frequently in my work to signal the presence of water, either directly, as element, or through reference, such as sound recording or a
fluidity of movement. More specifically it also implies a presence of boundary or of threshold to overcome or only to notice. The passage between a clean white sheet of paper and
the traces left by the movement of body, gradually marking it and darkening its surface, are about the almost unnoticeable boundary between lack of motion and movement, silence and
sound, and between absence and presence." (Monika Weiss)
