On the occasion of its Fifth Anniversary, Perry Rubenstein Gallery presents The Law of Fives, a group exhibition featuring monumental works by each artist: FAILE, Zilla Leutenegger, Teresa Margolles, Robin Rhode, Richard Woods. Each of the five artists to be shown work within the realm of illusion or with the notion of re-envisioning that which has previously existed.

Since the gallery’s inauguration in September of 2004, it has staged over fifty exhibitions incorporating artists from the program and beyond. Early exhibitions featuring historically significant artists often rooted in the performative realm (Bas Jan Ader in 2005, James Lee Byars in 2006) have provided a contextual foundation to the program, highlighting cross-genre and hybrid artistic practices. The fifth anniversary of the gallery is about looking beyond, looking into the future—highlighting what the gallery looks like now, where we’ve been and where we’re going.

In Mayan mythology, the coming Fifth World (where our present world is presented as the Fourth) is a pseudo utopia, where magic and connectedness is rediscovered. Some tribes refer to this period of change, the door to the Fifth World, as “Purification Time”; all of the Earth’s life is then said to be “raised” to its perfected-eternal form. Our 5th Anniversary exhibition will focus on a passing through of sorts, into a utopian or dystopian landscape with a visual immediacy. Using the notion of a door (both literally and conceptually) to the future as a starting point, the works included have a performative or temporal element. They are about a transcendence of time and or space, the physical act of creation or the physical experience of the creation point towards a passing through into another (utopian) world that is at once immediately accessible or just at arm’s length. These artists conceive of something in two or three dimensions but the realization of the work is ultimately in another dimension than it began in its conception.

Richard Woods’ door leads you into the exhibition. Bright red and freestanding, the door is fixed into a steel frame, the skeleton of the sheetrock wall. Leutenegger’s Bathroom entices you; the door is slightly ajar and fixed, so that the viewer only sees the reflection in the mirror of a woman taking a shower. Margolles’ wall stops you; relocated from her hometown of Culiacán, Mexico (dubbed “Narco City”), the cinderblock wall is riddled with bullet holes from drug-related shootings. FAILE’s installation imagines an architecture of their language: wooden boxes silkscreened with images of religious iconography, historical figures, and futurist superheroes are stacked one on top of the other to create a fantastical narrative that is all their own. Robin Rhode’s staged actions allow us to enter into his world and vision, showing his ability to bring his narrative or fantasy to life. For Rhode nothing is inanimate, and everything is possible.

Richard Woods was born in 1966 in Cheshire, United Kingdom; he now lives and works in London. His commission for the Lever House in New York will be on view December 3, 2009 – February 2010. Zilla Leutenegger was born in Switzerland in 1968 and lives and works in Zurich; her first exhibition at the gallery will be in April 2010. Teresa Margolles was born in Culiacán, Mexico in 1963; she lives and works in Mexico City. Margolles represented Mexico this year at the 53rd Venice Biennale. FAILE is the Brooklyn based artist duo Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, born in 1975 in Minneapolis and 1976 in Canada, respectively. FAILE’s first large-scale solo exhibition with Perry Rubenstein Gallery will be in May 2010. Robin Rhode was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1974 and lives and works in Berlin. He will have a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in March 2010.