UNEXPECTED OBSTACLES: WORK BY PERRY HOBERMAN 1982-98
OPENS AT ZKM MEDIA MUSEUM 29 MAY 1998

The visitors to this retrospective are heading for unfamiliar
experiences with superficially familiar objects. Film sequences,
advertising slogans, kitchen appliances, and last but not least familiar
computer monitors are displaced from their usual context and are
arranged in surprisingly novel ways that are highly imaginative. Perry
Hoberman uses these objects as a starting point for developing totally
new aesthetic systems of interrelations.

In "Dead Space/Living Rooms," for example, film stills and fragments of
sound tracks from long forgotten movies spring to life again as huge 3D
projections. In the interactive installation "Faraday's Garden" the
whole arsenal of electrical household equipment comprising mixers,
shavers and fans turns into a kind of mechanical ballet. Starting up
this kinetic sculpture follows a hidden pattern and takes the viewers in
an almost ghostlike choreography through the room.

Perry Hoberman is an absolute expert in handling the full potential of
the new media in order to create representative new spaces for
observation. In his works the haptic character of objects is placed in
juxtaposition with the volatility of images. He contrasts the cold
presentation of a virtual reality with imaginative dreams. In this way
he expresses his comment on the euphoria of many progressive utopias in
both a nostalgic and satiric way.