Moving Images

Posted by Emily Lyons Tuesday June 24, 2008 - 04:12 PM

Washington Spaces just printed its annual Art issue (Summer 2008, check it out). It’s a favorite of mine – throughout the year we cover local artists and homes filled with challenging, insightful pieces, but our Summer issue is when we really throw the spotlight on creativity.

Patch Mat an acrylic painting by Christine Gray

I’m continually impressed with the ingenuity of our local arts scene. To wit: At a recent collectors’ talk sponsored by the good folks at Transformer, Jan and Peter Hapstak graciously opened their doors for guests to see their lively collection of bold, graphic art – everything from Joan Miró originals to a coffee table embedded with illustrated envelopes mailed to the homeowners by rising local talent Trevor Young.

an envelope illustrated by artist Trevor Young

There’s no shortage of exquisite art in the usual formats: peaceful landscapes, elegant portraits, and colorful abstractions. But for some, all that just seems too flat, too typical, too still. This is the age of information, and we’re accustomed to absorbing many forms of it all at once. If we’re not talking on our cell phones while watching the nightly news while checking our e-mail, we feel like we’re wasting time. Naturally, our art is becoming more complicated, too.

I stopped in to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to see the new installment of the dramatic video art exhibit, The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image. Although I have yet to visit a home in this area that has integrated video art into the décor, it’s clear we’re becoming more “at home” with the notion of art that doesn’t sit still. It’s likely just a matter of time before projected, changing images on walls become as mainstream as framed art.

The exhibit has several works composed of multiple screens that combine for a complex narrative – for example, in Candice Breitz’s Mother + Father, the artist presents 12 characters from popular films, each on its own screen, that run simultaneously to form a kind of melodramatic cacophony. By turns laughable and endearing, it shows us (in stereo) some Hollywood-fueled stereotypes of how we view the roles and struggles of parents.

Mother + Father by Candice Breitz

Pierre Huyghe’s The Third Memory explores the power film has to alter perceptions and plant memories. In one of the most mesmerizing pieces, Isaac Julien fills four screens with juxtaposed hot and cold landscapes (Scandinavia, Burkina Faso) while a graceful, contemplative African-American woman walks through and observes them.

mothion picture art piece by Isaac Julien

And I am seriously oversimplifying. The exhibit’s content is rich with ideas – from the way innocuous news footage can be consequentially biased to the way cinema can confuse our sense of place (we’re certain it’s Brooklyn when really, it’s Hollywood). If you’re craving art that moves you, stop by the Hirshhorn (the exhibit runs through Sept. 7) and check out art that moves, period. Plan to spend a couple hours.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue & 7th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20013
hirshhorn.si.edu

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