Helga and Carl is a 150 sq. ft. wooden sculpture in the form of an upright larger-than-life entirely interactive wooden book. As the viewer opens, builds, writes, and engages with 30 interactive pieces (handmade books, photography collections, home furnishings, tools and customized clothing), he advances the plot as audience, narrator, and protagonist.
Helga and Carl explores the relationship between creation and consumption, especially the transitions between the two. The story is told through collaborations with 15 hand-chosen visual artists – each contributing a 24″ x 24″ or 24″ x 48″ visual chapter, using a variety of media – tiles, photography, paint, stain, sculpture, poetry, dress-making, and book-arts. The chapters are brought together through story-telling sequences included in a transparent wooden latticework – incorporating each artist’s component into a big-picture infrastructure.
The viewer encounters Carl Sagan, Carl Jung, and Pac-Man – brought together by a mysterious, benevolent entity named Helga.
The installation premiered on May 16, 2015 at 660 Studios, Jersey City, NJ and was later in residence Figment Arts Festival on Governor’s Island, NYC during summer 2015.
Fellows
Alex Pergament Helga and the Life-sized Carl Sagan Alex Pergament is a Jersey City-based photographer and attorney. His photographs reflect on the relationship between community and individual identity. He primarily shoots with Polaroids, and incorporates them into large-scale hand-made books. Alex is an artist-in-residence at 660 Studios. He has edited and published The Escape Anthology for the Young Photographers Alliance, and received the Young Artists fellowship from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He has exhibited solo and group shows in New York, D.C., Chicago, and New Jersey. Alex is also an intellectual property attorney, serving artists and small businesses in New Jersey and New York. He served as a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and was a Magna Cum Laude graduate of George Washington University Law School.
