Künstlerhaus Bethanien

Chris Casady

10 - 26 Aug 2015

© Chris Casady
Pencil Dance, (silent version), USA 1989
2:48 min Pencil
CHRIS CASADY
10 - 26 August 2015

Curated by Robert Seidel http://www.robertseidel.com

Working with appropriated material is a long established artistic practise, but the experimental film Pencil Dance (silent version, 1989, 2:48 min) offers a different twist. Chris Casady used to work as an animator in Hollywood’s special effects industry with a focus on hand-drawn natural phenomenon like lightning, fluids or sparks.Around 1984 he decided to recontextualize his own drawings by liberating them from their commercial application. Using pencil drawings from 8 years of work he created a fully abstract film, bridging unrelated scenes from science fiction movies to glossy advertising. In the high-contrast tableaux only the animated movement reveals traces of their previous usage and the intrinsic visual perspective these now freed drawings have been constructed for.
Chris Casady, born 1952, lives and works in Los Angeles, USAThe on-going screening series Phantom Horizons presents digital as well as analogue works that question the paradigm of linear perspective, seeking for a new kind of “status perspective” [Bedeutungsperspektive]. The latter was a development of medieval painting, in which the size of figures is determined by their hierarchical significance. Extending this approach with deconstructivistic ideas and contemporary possibilities of film creation, the presented works open up multifaceted, unseen horizons.
 

Tags: Robert Seidel