- Venue
- Kettles Yard
- Location
‘Momentary Momentum 2’ contends and demonstrates the power of the drawn line and its assimilation into the medium of non-pixelated animation. The exhibition explodes the multifaceted universe of animation serving to elucidate and presents a platform for its capabilities, which range from mere visual titillation to all engulfing, liminality inducing visual phantasmagoria.
Consequently cohesion is not the prime locus of the exhibition, which offers more of a pluralistic sensibility. This is encountered not merely through the fragmentary selection of exhibits, but through the staccato sense of passage engendered through heavy black curtains, which segregate each of the dimly lit ‘white cubes’. Yet, disparity is not the overwhelming sensation evoked by the exhibition and the curators Ziba de Weck and Laurence Dreyfus illustrate their presence through the programme of short films entitled ‘Poetry, Fantasy and Beauty’; which unites films by Paul Bush and Lisa Milroy, Michael Dudok de Wit, Brent Green and Takashi Ishida.
Takashi Ishida’s animated film ‘Ema/Emaki’ elegantly delivers floral, sinuous and overlapping patterns which are engaged in a symbiotic relationship with the accompanying and frenetic music composed by Masashi Ishida; the piece constituting a sort of tactile audio visual abstracted narrative defined by its organic ambiguity. Consummately executed, quirky, eccentric, but not entirely fascinating the subsequent animations merge indistinctly into the next, with the exception of Michael Dudok de Wit’s ‘Father and Daughter’. Simplistic in conception, the tale commences with a father and daughter cycling along a sea front, he leaves her departing in a boat, never to be seen again. Rich in narrative, this non-linear evocation of separation holds a tangible elegiac quality, which is both touching and poignant.
However, omitting this noted exception, the conception of art, which prevails until this point engenders a sort of languid passivity, however this stasis is duly disgruntled by Kara Walker’s raucous piece of overt political dimension ‘The Creation of African America’. The work deploys her signature device of cut out silhouettes, wryly choreographed to create a symbolic and compelling narration of the passage of slaves from Africa to North America. At time the execution of the piece holds a budget scrappiness that would seem to negate the horror and actuality of the events it purports to represent. However, in places the piece is simultaneously daringly lucid, astute and darkly comical. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the riotous scene of homosexual intercourse between a self-felating slave and white slave master. Indeed, following the graphically depicted sexual act, the slave becomes pregnant. Whilst initially perplexing, the logic of this interaction becomes apparent on reflection, clearly biologically impossible walker shrewdly invokes gender politics to convey racial hierarchy.
This consummates a sort of crescendo within the exhibition and the consequent descent ensues with Francis Alys’ ‘Time is a trick of the mind’ 1998, a looped animated diptych, ostensibly a visual exercise in simulacrum, repetition, duality and disparity. Whilst highlighting intellectually grandiose themes, the psychological process invited here is neither wildly engaging nor profound.
Naoyuki Tsuji’s ‘Children of the Shadows’ is an atmospheric and macabre piece that charts the loss of innocence of its young protagonists. The two characters meander through the pulsating maze like landscape which morphs and mutates, Tsuji utilising the visualisation of the landscape to reflect the psychological state of these bemused, lost children. The overall affect is a dark phantasmagoria, which is visually spectacular yet emotionally disturbing, this accumulative and broody piece engulfs with its mesmerising narrative.
It seems fair to note that some works play second fiddle to others, yet this is a striking exhibition, which refutes the predominance of digitalisation and furthermore exemplifies the inventiveness and virtuoso of those at the forefront of this medium.
