Morgan Lehman Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Jeff Perrott. This is his second solo show at the gallery.

In his new body of inkjet on canvas works, Perrott attempts to dismantle visual perception and distort the quotidian images that represent his daily life and art practice. Images of his studio, family, and places in his life are fragmented into an orderly system. The resulting affect is pixilated and repurposed imagery; the compositions consist of a multitude of various- sized black and primary-colored dots or circles. The patterned regularity of the portioned image into a cellular structure has a potential for visual chaos. Every particle of visual information is contained within its own cell, making it difficult for the mind to decipher the imagery when viewing it up close. It is as if an attempt to organize the intangibility of memory and perception is taking place.

Space is given to the viewer to play their part in bringing clarity to the work. The canvases seem to have an invisible screen or a veil that conceals the details, giving a glimpse into what is there and somehow protecting the privacy and vulnerability of the subjects. As one walks farther away from the works the imagery becomes more visible, allowing a visual safety to the imagery. The distance between the canvas and viewer, created by the barrier of pixilation, serves only to make the subject of each work that much more tantalizing, just barely out of one’s grasp.

Inspired by his project “END”, a collaboration that began in 2006 with Douglas Weathersby- Environmental Services, where artwork was transformed with saws and a chipper into dust or ‘artmulch’, Perrott created this new body of work responding to a similar impetus.

“Here, my goal is to do something similar with digital photographs of my art-life—to transform them into constituent parts. Here, though, I also seek to preserve and balance the resulting visual ‘mulch’ with the original photographic image – to establish in the visual ‘dust’ a trace of the original image.” -Jeff Perrott, 2009

Jeff Perrott received his MFA from Yale, in 1992. His work is in numerous private and museum collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, Wadsworth Atheneum, CT, and Marsh Art Gallery, VA. He has exhibited with Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, Boston Center for the Arts, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR, and Sara Nightingale Gallery, NY. Jeff lives and works in Boston, MA.