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4/11/2014

Two Exhibitions

Salon 94 Bowery, New York

Takeshi Murata
OM Rider

Takeshi Murata (American, b. 1974) works with CGI (computer generated imaging) and digital animation in a variety of mediums. His innovative and evolving processes range from intricate hand-drawn animations, to installations accenting the defects and broken codes of film, advertising and pop culture. Known for a sophisticated, psychedelic style of image-making with deep, dream-like spaces and a digital color palette, he stands as one of the top artists using computer software as his medium.

OM Rider (2013-14, 11 minutes 39 seconds) is the latest video by Murata, with soundtrack by Robert Beatty. The video tells a suspenseful story of a murderous encounter between a punk werewolf and a dapper old man. Set in a cavernous digital environment, the space of the action is dark and mysterious. The soundtrack pulses and accelerates with hypnotic, electronic rhythms. Suspense drives the narrative forward.

The wolf rides a scooter through dark, underwater-like environments – he is submerged in a simulated world. He wears cut-off shorts, smokes a pipe, vomits green goop, plays the keyboard and the trumpet. The man sits in a suit and tie at an oversize table. He peels and slices a banana with a pocket knife and climbs an endless spiral staircase to nowhere or infinity, or both. He also takes a few breaks along the way to catch his breath.

Using symbolism, humor, and horror movie tropes, Murata flirts with the comically absurd and appeals to the enigmatic symbolism and surrealist impulses of filmmakers like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky. OM Rider can be seen as an homage to cult thrillers like Altered States and John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as Hollywood monster movies like King Kong, Jaws, An American Werewolf in London, and many more. The video also shares a relationship to the manipulated video game environments of Cory Arcangel and Harun Farocki. OM Rider mingles the maximum psychedelic effect of Paul Sharits, with the playful deconstructions of Jack Goldstein, and the tragic, often silent toy characters of Laurie Simmons.

OM Rider – like Murata’s last animated short I, Popeye – incorporates tragic humor alongside nods to Hollywood cinema in the telling of a story where the central character dies, one tragically and one murderously. Like his practice at large, Murata’s CGI realism incorporates both figurative elements and abstract fields, patterns, and breakdowns.

The exhibition will also include Yellow Jogger, 2014. This dream object is another hyperreal, hybrid character out of a cartoon, a game avatar or a lucid dream. The work collapses simulated and real space, with a drawn wall sculpture that functions as a frame. The animated image depicts a yellow smile face sphere trapped in a clear cube – a pop culture nod to the cubist-like breakdown of a face into line and color. The artist’s frame cuts through the center of the composition, deconstructing the simulated space and underscoring its flatness in reality. The frame shape comes from a digital line drawing, then fabricated in unibody aluminum and seamlessly painted in gradient color. The handcrafted work pushes forward the artist’s ongoing exploration of new media and technologies.

The artist's work is in the collections of DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Palm Springs Art Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., and The Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington D.C. Most recently, Murata's work has been included in group exhibitions at Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Bergen Kunstall, Bergen.

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Jessica Rankin
Dear Another

Jessica Rankin’s new constellation drawings accumulate words, sometimes sparingly, sometimes in rhythmic convulsions. Like her text-based embroideries for which she is known, these randomized word paintings are stitched together into complex, nonlinear patterns and arranged against cerulean blue & black ink mappings of the stars. Taking theories of cosmic expansion and contraction as her starting point, Rankin creates dynamic and highly personal abstractions that oscillate between order and disorder, construction and destruction..

Rankin begins her creative process with the written word, combining stream of consciousness, found texts, stories, memories and fleeting thoughts. She then cuts apart individual words and phrases and recomposes them into new sequences using a method of “guided chance.” Words are integrated like stars into celestial maps, each one a specific night sky. The constellations, as it were, become sites for the re-inscription of meaning and make up a vast visual poem based on the unpredictable, the fractal..

Within each piece the string of words read as a poem. The constellations they inhabit function as a complex web, brain-scape or vascular system. While new meanings are formed in their chance encounters, there are also the absences, elisions or the obscured. “Reading” these works is a dynamic process as each viewer enters and leaves them at different points and experiences a poem of seemingly infinite possibility. .

Rankin’s new series of small-scale collages and accordion books similarly explore the phenomenological interplay between image and text. Sourced from astronomy textbooks, maps and other found material, these works pair phrases with abstracted images that co-exist in a play between harmony and chance. .

Jessica Rankin has long been inspired by poetry and the written word. For this exhibition, she has collaborated with noted poet, Brenda Shaughnessey, to select a group of writers to react and riff upon the drawings. The result are poems of faded love, the dog of Sputnik, and an ode to Beyoncé. In conjunction with the exhibition, Salon 94 Freemans will host three poetry readings on November 5th, 7th, and 16th and will publish a catalogue of Rankins’ work alongside the poems of Michael Albo, Raphael Allison, Mark Bibbins, Tina Chang, Eduardo C. Corral, Alex Dimitrov, R.Erica Doyle, Matthea Harvey, Cathy Park Hong, Morgan Parker, Brenda Shaughnessy, Pamela Sneed and Craig Teicher..

Jessica Rankin (b. Sydney, Australia, 1971) lives and works in New York, NY. She attended the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, Empire State College, New York, NY, Melbourne University, Melbourne, Australia and the Studio School of Drawing and Painting, New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Lacunae, carlier| gebauer, Berlin, Germany, Passages, Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta, GA, USA, Skyfolds: 1941-2010, White Cube Hoxton Square, London, UK, Revenant, carlier | gebauer, Berlin, Germany, Jessica Rankin, The Project, New York, NY, Jessica Rankin, White Cube Hoxton Square, London, UK and The Measure of Every Pause, P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center, Long Island City, NY, among others. .

Opening Wed Nov 5 6pm

Salon 94 Bowery
243 Bowery
Open Tuesday through
Saturday 11 am – 6 pm, and Sunday 1 – 6 pm.

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