Sue de Beer’s video plays with themes of Islamic orientalism

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Ken Johnson

Sue de Beer’s installation at Boesky East. Credit Courtesy of the artist and Bill Orcutt/Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York

NEW YORK---Sue de Beer’s video “The Blue Lenses” is hallucinatory, obliquely political and intensely poetic. Shot in Abu Dhabi, it plays on the Western tradition of Orientalism, which imagines the Middle East as an exotic zone of magic and eros. Partitions perforated in Islamic architectural patterns, a thickly carpeted floor, big bean bag seating and a blue tint on the gallery’s storefront windows provide an atmospheric setting for viewing the two-screen, 20-minute projection. [link]


Sue de Beer ‘The Blue Lenses’ Boesky East 20 Clinton Street,­Lower East Side Through Sunday