Beige Pursuit

By Sara Magenheimer

A character called X journeys through a present that is neither here nor there, but feels oddly proximate. She moves through landscapes of words, ever-shifting to host the groundless present, a place and time driven by her motivated, yet contextless pursuit. Narrative is always under construction. The preferred medium for X’s peregrinations: a sentence, as capacious as a three-second video, a ten-year nap, or an unexplored hard drive. In this suspended world, X’s sensorium is curious and alert, but also anguished, hesitant, and precarious: she feels around for sympathetic energies and familiar faces along the way. Along what way? A book like a body might be a room for waiting, a machine for memory, a sensuous thing, an image quickly glimpsed, a performance still ongoing...

Working across a range of media including video, sound, performance, sculpture, collage, and installation, New York-based artist Sara Magenheimer disrupts, manipulates, and defamiliarizes language with bold combinations of image and text. Her videos incorporate traditional filmic editing techniques alongside those inspired by music and collage. In syncopated progressions of pictures and words, Magenheimer pushes against the bounds of narrative, charting circuitous storylines through vernacular associations that invite individual interpretations. Her first book of writing, Beige Pursuit, was published by Wendy's Subway in October 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include The New Museum, New York (2018), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR (2017); The Kitchen, New York (2017); Chapter NY (2017): Art in General in partnership with kim?, Riga, Latvia (2016); the Center for Ongoing Research & Projects (COR&P), Columbus, OH (2016); JOAN, Los Angeles (2015); and Recess, New York (2015). Her videos have been screened at the Flaherty Seminar (2019), International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018), Brooklyn Academy of Music (2017); the New York Film Festival (2017, 2015, 2014); Images Festival, Toronto (2018, 2017, 2016, 2015); Anthology Film Archives, New York (2016); EMPAC, Troy, NY (2016); and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015).

- Wendy's Subway

4 5/8" × 7", Offset printed, Perfect bound

Published by Wendy's Subway in 2018

Brooklyn, NY