Sparkly Berman, Miracle Zone

May 15 – June 27, 2021

Le Maximum is pleased to present Miracle Zone, an exhibition by Sparkly Berman, FKA Nora Berman. The exhibition consists of paintings, sculptures, ceramic instruments, and a durational performance livestreamed over Twitch throughout the opening hours of the show. Viewers are invited to participate online and in-person with this performance which takes place in a black room in the back of the gallery. This space yields the alchemical magic of collaboration and experience that comprises the Miracle Zone.

 Art in the Miracle Zone is a medium of transformation: paintings become portals to ways of being and maps of altered states, ceramic instruments summon distant energies and guide ritual acts, and performance is a platform for catharsis and telepathy. Influenced by sources ranging from the Ten Luminous Emanations of the Kabbalah to the dystopian ceremonies of Mike Kelley, the Miracle Zone is a place where disbelief is suspended and metamorphosis prevails.

Miracles are events that defy the laws of nature and science, or lawlike events of whose causes we are ignorant. These works depart from the latter understanding, approaching art as a material pathway to unknown structures and invisible frequencies. Like the demiurge of ancient Greece who shapes worlds from clay, Berman and her counterparts give physical approximation to spiritual realms. Visitors to the Miracle Zone are invited to participate in these and other processes of creative becoming and psychic dissolution.

Sparkly Berman (née Nora Berman, b.1990, Los Angeles) holds a BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles and MFA from Kunst Institut Academy of Art and Design, Basel, Switzerland. Solo and two-person exhibitions: Five Car Garage, Los Angeles, Downs & Ross, New York, Weiss Falk, Basel; Ellis King, Dublin. Selected group exhibitions: High Art, Paris; dèpendance, Brussels; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St.Gallen; Longtang, Zürich; Mickey Schubert, Berlin; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Honolulu, Zurich; Ellis King, Dublin; Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles; Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin; and Marta Herford Museum, Herford, Germany.

 Video edit by Jacqueline Kramer