Jen Bervin's new installation, The River, is a 230 ft. panoramic scale model of the Mississippi River composed of hand-sewn silver sequins. Installed on the ceiling, the model (one inch to one mile) shows the river mapped from the geocentric perspective, from inside the earth's interior looking up at the riverbed.
Jen Bervin, The River (Mississippi Meander Belt). Hand sewn sequins on tyvek, mull, and paper. 230 curvilinear ft, 2010
As one moves through the space, light shifts actively over the surface of the silver sequins. The effect is that of light on water. Oddly, the space around the river appears to visually collapse. The poetics of space, real and imagined, are at play in the piece. The lower Mississippi, or meander belt, was completed during a residency at The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. During this time, the artist found that it took the same amount of time to sew in sequins each section of the model river that it would to walk the real one.
At the furthest wall, the piece concludes where the mouth of the river merges with the low-water areas of the delta. The delta is constructed from an irregular grid of silver paper; the shore and archipelagos are cut away, lace-like. What is land, island, water, outer gulf becomes a series of disorienting imagined reversals implicating the entire space and one's odd positon in it.
The piece has not yet been exhibited in its entirety. For queries, contact jenbervin (at) mac.com
