DeCordova’s long-standing Platform series continues with two innovative projects by artists Roberley Bell and Alix Pearlstein, each opening Friday, May 16. Platform is a series of exhibitions by early- and mid-career artists from both the New England and national arts communities. These shows engage with deCordova’s unique indoor and outdoor spaces and social, geographical, and physical location.

Platform 14: Alix Pearlstein, The Park features the New-York based artist’s newest major work, a three-channel video conceived for and filmed at deCordova as a composite “portrait-in-flux” of the Sculpture Park. Projected in deCordova’s Dewey Family Gallery, The Park brings the outdoor experience inside to create an uncanny reflection of the visitor’s encounter with art and nature.

The video installation portrays a single area of the Sculpture Park from three distinct viewpoints. In each scene the camera moves forward at a careful but unrelenting pace, absorbing and rearranging the ‘cast’–the institution’s ground, actors, and sculpture. Installed in the round, the videos will emanate outward, giving the viewer in the center of the gallery the illusion of ever-expanding space.

Heavily influenced by Minimalism, dance, and cinematic history, Pearlstein’s videos explore performance within everyday spaces and environments. She choreographs actors and her camera in equal measure to create distilled moments of familiar strangeness; common actions are made anew through performed and repeated gestures. The Park presents the Sculpture Park as a site of contemplation, scrutiny, and mystery.

Alix Pearlstein (born 1962, New York, New York) lives and works in New York. She received her BS from Cornell University and MFA from Purchase College, SUNY. Pearlstein’ work has been exhibited internationally, including at Marfa Ballroom, Texas; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; The Kitchen, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; BAM / PFA, Berkeley, California; SMAK, Ghent, Belgium; Biennale de Lyon, France; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2011 Grants to Artists Award. Pearlstein’s work will also be on display at Samson Projects in Boston, June 6–July 19, 2014.

All images: Alix Pearlstein, The Park, 2014. Production still, 3-channel HD video, 3:50 min. Courtesy of On Stellar Rays, NY. Photograph by Dan Boardman.