Kinesthesia

Shon Kim
Kristin Reeves
Kelly Sears
Wenhua Shi

April 13 to May 11, 2019

The video works in Kinesthesia explore ritualized movement and idealized/abstracted bodies through appropriated imagery and experimental animation techniques. Within the exhibition setting a haptic feedback loop is created. Through image and sound, osmosis and suggestion, the installation creates a space where observers consider firsthand how we receive and experience information on somatic and conscious levels.

Experimenting with locomotion based on chronophotography in homage to Muybridge and Jules-Maray, Kim traverses the thin line between mastery and control, posturing and threat. Using various source material including old martial arts books, magazines and audio recordings, BOOKANIMA dissects the idea of movements in a sociopolitical sense—a corps of bodies and minds in thrall to larger ideals situated on the continuum between defence and aggression.

Through Reeve’s reanimation of 16mm media cadavers Body Contours takes a deep dive into the realms of focused dreaming and visualization: the creation of these “mind movies” standing in for filmmaking itself. Harder than it seems, with all the background distortion we create for ourselves; control can be elusive and fragmentary. Risk is inherent in the search for peak performance. Inner worlds can collide too.

Sears animates hundreds of images from massage instruction manuals to explore the transmission of language itself, with the body as receptacle for this knowledge. While Applied Pressure envelopes us in the therapeutic mood of healing touch, it also suggests the proximal distress of our surrounding lives—the double meaning of the work’s title—and the memories of trauma our bodies retain.

In Walking Cycle, Shi propels the body through other dimensions. Motions yield to ectoplasmic ripples as actions displace space. Extra-dimensional activity breaks down the corporeal in order to reform it. Abstraction leads to coalescence via the power of suggestion—a mesmeric conjuring that is also a tribute to abstract animation pioneers Len Lye and Hans Richter.

Shon Kim completed a BFA in Film and Video at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MFA in Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts and a Ph.D. in Animation Theory at Chung-Ang University, Seoul. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Kristin Reeves has shown her interdisciplinary work internationally in museums, galleries, theatres, art events and festivals such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Crossroads Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], European Media Arts Festival, Revelation Perth and Microscope Gallery. She was awarded the 2016 Indie Grits Film Festival Helen Hill Memorial Award for Body Contours and is a Signal Culture Artist in Residence. Reeves has also collaborated in over 20 live multimedia projects staged in performance venues such as Steppenwolf Theatre, The Boiler and Granoff Centre. She is Programming Director for That One Film Festival in Muncie, Indiana and Assistant Professor of Art at Murray State University in western Kentucky.

Kelly Sears is an experimental animator who recasts and reframes American archetypes and institutions to reimagine our own social and political legacy. She views animation as a critical practice, cutting out and collaging as a way to intervene and expand context to appropriated source materials while reworking recognizable social or political narratives. Sears has screened retrospective programs of her short work at Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archives, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Portland Art Museum and the San Francisco Cinematheque. She is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she teaches advanced filmmaking, animation, experimental documentary and media archeology.

Wenhua Shi pursues a poetic approach to moving image making, and investigates conceptual depth in film, video, interactive installations and sound sculptures. His work has been presented at museums, galleries and film festivals, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, European Media Art Festival, Athens Film and Video Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, West Bund 2013: a Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary Art, Shanghai, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and the Arsenale of Venice in Italy. Shi has received awards from New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and Black Maria Film and Video Festival.