A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Threshold, an exhibition of new work by 2023–2024 Fellow Allison Halter. An exploration of the erotic desire to meld with the world around us, Threshold asks, “Where are the edges?”
Through a triptych of asynchronously looping videos, Halter questions what it means to variously be immersed within a landscape, to function as a part of the landscape, and to become a landscape. Forms and figures emerge from the environment, only to seemingly dissolve into one another. Distinct contours subtly melt and shift, scale is nebulous, location uncertain. Ostensibly still video frames reveal gradual, persistent movement. The deliberately slow pacing of the work invites the audience to find and consider the material correspondences on display.
A hand-knotted, black-on-black wool rug featured throughout the videos is centered in the room, exposing its hidden pattern. A soundtrack that slips between atmospherics and chorals bathes the space. Steady tones unravel into penetrating vibrations that ebb until they are nearly inaudible. In Threshold, the experience of not only watching, but allowing a washing over, encourages a similar softening in the viewer. This is Halter’s first solo exhibition in New York City.
Allison Halter is a Brooklyn-based artist. She received her MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and her BFA from the University of Southern California. Halter has exhibited and performed throughout the United States and abroad, including Fruitlands Museum, Echo Park Film Center, Basilica Hudson, Walker Art Center, Knockdown Center, Flux Factory, Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival, Artists’ Television Access, Experimental Film Festival Portland, Ditch Projects, and internationally at Galerie im Körnerpark, Documenta (13), Titanik Galleria, MUU Performance Voyage, and d'Clinic Studios.