Jillian Mayer and Eric Schoenborn: Erasey Page

Jillian Mayer in collaboration with Eric Schoenborn, Erasey Page, 2012, web-based project.

Bass Museum of Art - Miami Beach

By Cara Despain

Mayer’s interactive web-based piece, “Erasey Page,” commissioned by the Bass Museum of Art, urges participants to visit Internet sites they would like to erase and subsequently whitewash the page with their mouse.

In a dark room tucked into the back of the museum that feels almost shameful or renegade-though Mayer’s self-help-intoned messages before and after assure people that they have made the right decision. Commenting in a comical way about the tenuous relationship that people, including artists, have with technology and the online world, it affords viewers an autonomy for which they are unprepared, allowing for an act of online vandalism and a self-edited experience that gives them a feeling of both power and guilt. It is a simple, direct and a one-off tongue-in-cheek comment. Happily, the experience can be forgotten when the act has been done and the viewer walks away. “Erasey Page” is an enabler that simultaneously questions its own function as a piece of art. The gratification ends, and so does the work. Through August 12.