Revival 复兴

Revival 复兴

Curated by Lorenzo Giusti
罗伦佐•鸠斯迪 策展

This film selection draws on the theme of animation as a space of reactivation. Introduced by the masterpiece Tusalva (1929), by the New Zealander animation pioneer Len Lye, the selection presents a total of 8 videos made in the last ten years by a heterogeneous group of visual artists of different generations: Francis Alÿs, Bruce Checefsky, Joachim Koester, Alessandro Pessoli, Robin Rhode and Jennifer West. Since its appearance, at the end of XIX century, the stop motion technique has been increasingly perceived by film makers as a vital space, a dynamic environment in which to give life to inanimate objects. In line with this trend, many contemporary visual artists are using animation as a special medium to bring artworks to life: drawings, paintings, sculptures, performances, design objects or architectures. The proposed videos, in particularly, make use of animation as a magical filter, a powerful potion able to bring creations of the past, or lost ones, back to life or even to give life to unborn projects. Together with the intimate relationships that can be build between artists of the past and present, the selection explores in the end one of the most fascinating opportunities that animation can offer: the reactivation of lost memories and meanings.

这些电影作品试图描绘动画触发空间的议题。由新西兰动画先驱列恩·雷（Len Lye）创作的经典作品《突色拉瓦》（Tusalava，1929）为起始，与其他7位来自不同时代的创作者近十年来创作的的作品一起，他们是：弗兰西斯·亚里斯（Francis Alÿs），布鲁斯·切舍夫斯基（Bruce Checefsky），乔基姆·克斯特（Joachim Koester）， 亚历山德罗· 派索利（Alessandro Pessoli）， 罗宾· 罗德（Robin Rhode）和珍妮弗·韦斯特（Jennifer West）。

自19 世纪末期定格动画技术出现，电影导演视其为活化的空间，动态的环境，赋予静态物体以生命。这一风潮线索之下，很多当代艺术家尝试用动画为特殊媒介，让艺术作品同样具有活力和生命：手绘、油画、雕塑、行为表演、设计和建筑。这些作品特别强调动画作为神奇的中介，强大的能量可以将过去、遗失的事物再次复现，或让那些从没存在的事物有其生命。在动画这一隐秘的线索联系中，艺术家也被超越时空的联系在一起。这些作品在一起去发现动画所给予的，再次重启那些遗失的记忆和意义。

 

List of works:

1. Len Lye, Tusalava, 1929, Film 35mm transferred to 16mm. 10’05’’, Courtesy GAM, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin.
2. Bruce Checefsky, Colored Rhythm, 2005, digital color animation, 03’00’’, Courtesy of the Artist.
3. Joachim Koester, My frontier is an Endless Wall of Point (After the mescaline drawings of Henry Michaux), 2007, Film 16mm, loop 2’, Courtesy Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen.
4. Robin Rhode, Piano Chair, 2011, digital animation, 03’50’’, Courtesy of the Artist.
5. Jennifer West, Salt Crystal Spiral Jetty Dead Sea Five Year Film, 2013, 70mm film negative transferred to high definition, 54’’, Courtesy Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles and Vilma Gold, London.
6. Jennifer West, Spiral of Time Documentary Film, 2013, 16mm negative transferred to high-definition, 9’1’’, Courtesy Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles and Vilma Gold, London.
7. Alessandro Pessoli, Autoritratto Petrolini, 2014, digital color animation, 2’12’’, Courtesy Galleria Zero, Milan.
8. Francis Alÿs, The Silence of Ani, 2015, Video and digital animation, 13’21’’, Courtesy of the Artist and 14^th Istanbul Biennial.

列恩·雷（Len Lye）《突色拉瓦》，10’05”，1929

布鲁斯·切舍夫斯基 （Bruce Checefsky）《彩色节奏》, 3’， 2005

乔基姆·克斯特 （Joachim Koester）《我的边境是一副无边无际由点构成的墙（在

亨利·米修的酶斯卡灵画作之后）》2’，2007

罗宾·罗德（Robin Rhode）《钢琴椅子》3’50”，2011

珍妮弗·韦斯特（Jennifer West）《盐晶体螺旋形防坡提死海五年电影》54”，

2013

珍妮弗·韦斯特（Jennifer West）《时间的螺旋纪录片》9’1”，2013

亚历山德罗·派索利（Alessandro Pessoli）《佩德罗理尼的自画像》2’12”，2014

弗兰西斯·亚里斯（Francis Alys）《安妮的沉默》13’21”，2015

Jennifer West (Topanga, CA – 1966) lives and works in Los Angeles. She is known for her digitized films that are made by hand manipulating film celluloid. West is influenced by classical structuralist film, urban mythology, folklore and popular culture, combining everyday actions and materials to create hypnotic, fast paced films. She has produced over 70 films since she started working this way in 2004.

 

Leonard Charles Huia “Len” Lye (Christchurch, New Zealand, 1901 –1980) as a painter, kinetic sculptor, writer, theorist, musician, experimental artist, photographer and filmmaker, was one of the pioneers of creating ways to make films without the use of a camera. He found it a cheaper route to create the movements he envisioned for his films by scratching or painting directly onto celluloid. His idea was to compose motion as one would compose sound.

Joachim Koester (Copenhagen – 1962) works principally in still photography and video. Starting in the mid-1990s, he developed an work that could be described as a complex web in which journalistic and historical research fuses with personal and fictive narratives. Koester is preoccupied with the unknown, the unseen, and the forgotten. Balancing the thin line between documentary and fiction, Koester’s films, photos, and installations reexamine and activate forgotten histories, failed utopias, and the obsolete.

Robin Rhode (Cape Town – 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist who engages in a variety of visual languages such as photography, performance, drawing and sculpture to create arrestingly beautiful narratives that are brought to life using quotidian materials such as soap, charcoal, chalk and paint. His interventions transform urban landscapes into imaginary worlds, compressing space and time, as two-dimensional renderings become the subject of three-dimensional interactions by a sole protagonist, usually played by the artist or by an actor inhabiting the role of artist.

 

Alessandro Pessoli (Cervia, Italy – 1963) is known for his evocative drawings, paintings, and videos that often depict expressive, seemingly melancholy figures within indeterminate spaces and dreamlike narratives. His work is rich in historical references to art, cinema and theatre but also in details drawn from everyday life and popular culture. For Pessoli, history is not a fixed entity but a shifting space, the meaning of which is particular to each different moment in time, and each individual.

Francis Alÿs (Antwerp, Belgium – 1959). Mexico-based artist, his work emerges in the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture, and social practice. After leaving behind his formal training as an architect, he has created a diverse body of artwork that explores urbanity, spatial justice, and land-based poetics. Employing a broad range of media from painting to performance, his works examine the tension between politics and poetics, individual action and impotence.

Bruce Checefsky (Jessup, PA – 1957) is a photographer and Director of the Reinberger Galleries at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Checefsky’s work is based on lost or destroyed Central and Eastern European avant-garde films from the 1920s and 30s, and early American experimental films, or on previously published but unmade film scenarios and scripts. He draws on archival documents to rethink the meaning of identity, history and memory.