An angel who wishes to spread their wings…

Untitled (transitions) is a multi-media installation that features projected, hand-drawn animations layered over oil-paintings situated on three walls of a given space. For the purpose of exploration, the three animations are designed using different stylistic approaches appropriate for the painted figure: one focusing on contour with limited movement, casting light to illuminate negative space of the painting with minimal details pulsing from the body, and one that branches from the figure itself to suggest a new form stretching across and outside of the painting. All are timed to illuminate one-by-one from a single vignette. This spotlight reveals the subject underneath; reminding the viewer of the painted form’s physical restraints to our reality. The layout of the composition is inspired by comic panels, so each image is designed to act independently yet, when combined, suggest a greater narrative. While isolated between these three planes, the figures encompass a whole; an individual.

 This installation permits viewers to witness the evolution of a mortal-bound angel as they attempt to spread their wings. Each panel captures the androgynous being in different moments of time as their bodily form undergoes transformation until finally reaching a point of rest- release, relief. The animations extend this narrative by breathing life into the form and allowing the angel to move, twitch, and extend beyond the canvas to a realm otherwise impermeable from their physical reality. The digital acts as an ethereal entity, an extension of the physical, granting permission to see the unseen and alleviating tension of the flesh made frozen in time. However, since the canvas is a static image and the animation an endless loop layered over the image, a tension is developed between the ethereal and physical, the mortal and angelic, digital and traditional. The digital relies on the existence of the painted object while the painted image’s desire to become free from the panel makes them yearn for the interaction of the digital.

The canvas is made mortal, yet the animation is made transcendent. Together, these realities interact to embrace and empower a body oscillating through this rapid, yet static, transition while simultaneously introducing a conflict that doesn’t ask for resolution.

+ Special Thanks +

Lee Blalock, Phyllis Bramson, Alex Esin, Julian Flavin, Shu Yin Lai, Kris 刘青倩, Irene Niké, Michael Roberts, Christopher Sullivan, Nora Taylor, Lee Weitzman, Sherman White