Karen Reimer: Endless Set

“We are reminded of the mathematical paradox of Zeno of Elea…the arrow never reaches the tree because it always has to cover half the distance again and again and again, meaning it slows more and more the closer it gets to the target.” Sabine C. Becker, Review of Dino Buzzati’s “The Falling Girl,”  For her 2nd solo show at moniquemeloche, Karen Reimer will exhibit her ongoing series “Endless Set” which made its inaugural debut in early 2007 at VONZWECK.

“It is a hard-line conceptual project, based on rules Reimer conceived before threading the first needle. Each crazy-quilt pillowcase is made up of a predetermined number of irregularly shaped, irregularly patterned patches. (Two, the first in the series, is made up of two patches; Thirty-Seven is composed of 37 patches, and so on.) Onto each pillowcase, the artist has stitched the accompanying prime number, a piece of white cotton fabric that is the same height in inches as the number it represents (e.g., Thirty-Seven is 37 inches tall)… As the series progresses and the numbers grow in value and height, the cases become more abstract, the sequence more oblique and indecipherable. The bright patchwork gives in to the growing swathes of white. Any portion of the number that does not fit within the grid of the pillowcase, Reimer has folded back onto itself, obscuring the prime-number sequence even further.” – Jake Malooley Time Out Chicago issue 112

The wikipedia definition of a prime number is a natural number greater than 1 which has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself. For example: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97, 101…