In a fluorescent-lit studio on Plymouth Avenue, Ben Perrone peers into a triangular mass of small black bags, each suspended from the ceiling by a barely visible length of fishing line. To illustrate the concept behind the piece, a prototype for his multimedia installation opening today in the Burchfield Penney Art Center, he walks through the floating cloud of black gift bags, pushing them off to either side as if moving through a thicket of weeds.
“The bag is a metaphor for an unlived life,” said Perrone, 77, a longtime Buffalo artist known for his abstract paintings. “I have 10,000 bags in this project, just one sixth of the guys who died in Vietnam. All these wars, you pile them up, and it’s a huge pile of wasted stuff. These guys could have been productive, added to the economy, changed the world, who knows what?”
For the exhibition, titled simply “War Ongoing Project,” Perrone inserted a slip of paper with the name of a soldier who has died in battle into each of the black bags and strung 5,000 of them from the ceiling of the Burchfield Penney’s project space. To enter the installation, visitors must physically wade through the bags and, Perrone hopes, be forced to contemplate the significance of the many lives cut short by the ravages of war.
The exhibition, which also will feature a series of readings and performances from theater companies and artists, is an attempt to dramatize and personalize war for a public which has come to view it largely as an abstraction. Perrone’s hope is to translate the casualty figures published in newspapers and recited on television broadcasts into a visceral, physical experience that packs a serious emotional jolt.
“They jump on the bandwagon too fast. If they thought about the consequences of it, maybe they would be less likely to make these judgments that are going to be somebody’s life, somebody’s family, their children, things that we’re supposed to have values about,” Perrone said. “I want them to think about it, that they shouldn’t just go for the next war without considering all of this.”
This project is something of a formal about-face for Perrone, a painter of dark and sometimes violent abstractions who has publicly pilloried such high-minded conceptual art projects in the past. But as the death toll, both civilian and military, inches upward in the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, Perrone says his conscience compelled him to address the problem in a manner that was anything but subtle.
The exhibition features music by California-based composer Hugh Levick, video projections by Jeffrey Proctor, and recorded interviews with veterans. It also will feature a wide array of warthemed exhibitions and activities at the Burchfield, including a panel of war writers at 2 p. m. Saturday; a panel of veteran artists at 2 p. m. April 25; performances and readings by Billy X Curmano; Road Less Traveled Productions (“War Room,” 2 p. m. May 13 and 16); poetry reading by Vincent O’Neill (4 p. m. May 16); Kyle Price (“A Sunday Afternoon,” 2 p. m. May 9), and others. Rocco LaPenna will perform his play, “Pvt. Wars,” at Rust Belt Books (202 Allen St.) tonight and Saturday and Thursday through April 17, with many more activities planned at other venues around town.
The project precedes a similar series of multidisciplinary exhibitions and projects on the subject of war that CEPA Gallery will mount in June. The two projects were developed independently of one another.
Scott Behrend, artistic director at Road Less Traveled, called Darryl Schneider’s 2006 play “War Room” “a very realistic and gritty portrayal of how war affects the people at home. I thought that would be a great addition to the work that Ben was interested in doing.”
As for Perrone, he hopes people walk away from the installation with an increased sense of responsibility — a new perspective on what the word “war” really means.
“I want to get them a little out of whack. That’s why I have them walking through the bags,” he said. “It’ll just knock them off their center and they’ll be maybe more apt to get into the message.”•
cdabkowski@buffnews.com
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