Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect, Selected Works (1997-2020)
Published for the first survey exhibition of artist and poet Jen Bervin, curated by Kendra Paitz, Shift Rotate Reflect features 23 individual and collaborative projects from 1997 to 2020. The works demonstrate the range of her interdisciplinary research, including the legacies of women artists and writers, relationships between text and textiles, and abstractions of language and landscape.
This 192-page monograph includes: poet and playwright Claudia Rankine’s far-ranging 20-page conversation with Bervin; Jennifer Yee’s (Director of Public Programs at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) in-depth interview with Bervin and artist Charlotte Lagarde about their collaborative project, Su Hui’s Picture of the Turning Sphere; exhibition curator Kendra Paitz’s essay on Bervin’s monumental River; scholar Jayme Collins’s essay on Bervin’s Silk Poems; a facsimile chapter from Bervin’s stitched artist’s book The Desert; a visual index of Bervin’s book projects; and an illustrated biography.
With texts by Jen Bervin, Jayme Collins, Charlotte Lagarde, Kendra Paitz, Claudia Rankine, and Jennifer Yee. Edited by Kendra Paitz and Jen Bervin. Designed by Brett Yasko.
“Bervin produces fastidious and often collaboratively made artifacts that resist scholarly conclusiveness for the purpose of illuminating the process of understanding.” —Jessica Baran, Artforum