Jenny Perlin

Date: 16 May – 15 June 2025
Location: Atelier Nord, Olaf Ryes plass 2 (entrance from Sofienberggata)
Opening hours: Thursday and Friday 15-18, Saturday and Sunday 12-18

Please join us for the exhibition opening on Thursday, 15^th of May 2025, from 6 PM.

Eureka is a series of works in 16mm film, video, and hand-drawn text animation by artist Jenny Perlin (b. 1970) that speculates about the stratosphere, envisioning relationships between historical imaginaries and contemporary scientific activities. Eureka is the culmination of Perlin’s PhD fellowship in Fine Art at Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

With Eureka, Perlin connects stories of balloon flight in the late 18th century to observations made by present-day stratospheric balloon missions. The films explore sites where the first balloon flight in the United States launched and landed, describe the disorientation of early aerial experiences, ponder what messages the stratosphere might send, and follow student scientists hard at work at a space station above the Arctic Circle, preparing their own experiments to launch up to 27km above the earth. 

What, or where is the stratosphere anyway? Just above Earth’s atmosphere, the temperature inverts, ozone gathers, it’s freezing cold, and dark. Wind currents, distinct from our own, move around the globe between 12 and 40 kilometers above where we are standing now. The stratosphere lies between Earth and space, imagined as an empty zone to traverse on the way out or fall through on the way back. The stratosphere is a fluctuating, unpredictable field of projection, fantasy, exploration, and potential exploitation. 

The project is inspired by two texts by the 19th century American author Edgar Allan Poe. The first is his 1835 “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” an early science-fiction tale about a balloon that transports its inventor all the way to the moon. The second is a long, indefinable work called “Eureka: A Prose Poem” (1848) in which Poe claims to have discovered the origins of the universe.

Jenny Perlin’s films, artworks, and essays engage documentary traditions, incorporating innovative stylistic techniques to engage with issues around truth, misunderstanding, and personal history. Her projects look closely at ways in which social machinations are reflected in the fragments of everyday life. Perlin’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and film festivals, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, and others. In addition to her work as an artist and educator, Perlin is director of The Hoosac Institute, a platform for text and image focusing on works that exceed or challenge conventional disciplinary narratives. 

www.jennyperlinstudio.com
www.hoosacinstitute.com

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Files to download:

List of works
Credits and acknowledgements

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See images of the exhibition opening on Facebook.

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The exhibition is supported by Oslo Council.