C a r t o o n e y
October 2019 - February 09
I like physics but I love cartoons Stephen Hawking
The impact of animated cartoons has been profound. In the early 20th century, we began exploiting the possibilities of the animated frame. The seven artists in this exhibition don’t create cartoons, they deconstruct those that already exist; from Looney Tunes, to The Simpsons to Charlie Brown. They exploit this potent material to reveal the inner and outer workings of our human world. The original cartoon is ever-present, haunting us with suggestive content.
The artists in this exhibition reframe our world. Here we are asked to consider the laws, systems and iconographies of the cartoon world while drawing parallels with our human world; physical laws, the laws of gravitation, matter + light, the physics of motion, and societal psychologies & behaviours. We are presented with fascinating catalogues and overlaying systems of symbolic language. The purposeful demolition of expectation in these works, mirrors the instabilities and dreams of modern life. They remind us that the pervasive medium of the cartoon can reflect and influence how we navigate the world. If there is a paradox here, it might be that dismantling a cartoon can throw open the doors of perception.
The impact of animated cartoons has been profound. In the early 20th century, we began exploiting the possibilities of the animated frame. The seven artists in this exhibition don’t create cartoons, they deconstruct those that already exist; from Looney Tunes, to The Simpsons to Charlie Brown. They exploit this potent material to reveal the inner and outer workings of our human world. The original cartoon is ever-present, haunting us with suggestive content.
The artists in this exhibition reframe our world. Here we are asked to consider the laws, systems and iconographies of the cartoon world while drawing parallels with our human world; physical laws, the laws of gravitation, matter + light, the physics of motion, and societal psychologies & behaviours. We are presented with fascinating catalogues and overlaying systems of symbolic language. The purposeful demolition of expectation in these works, mirrors the instabilities and dreams of modern life. They remind us that the pervasive medium of the cartoon can reflect and influence how we navigate the world. If there is a paradox here, it might be that dismantling a cartoon can throw open the doors of perception.
Curation + Design: Sarah Joyce + Gordon Duggan
Martin Arnold
BLACK HOLES, 2015
In all his work Martin Arnold exposes the ‘psychoanalytic underbelly’ of family entertainment. Black Holes deconstructs a few frames from a 1944 cartoon entitled How to Play Golf featuring Goofy. In this audio-visual, Golf Instruction How-To, Goofy pulls out a revolver and shoots himself in the head after failing to sink a hole. Arnold deconstructs the frames into a condensed, back and forth, juddering replay, forcing us to focus on the moment. Originally trained in psychology, Arnold is a central figure in the Austrian avant-garde film movement. He skillfully deconstructs and reworks individual frames from pop culture classics, revealing surprising layers of subconscious, unconscious and societal influences.
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Biography
Filmmaker and artist, trained in psychology whose work has been shown at more than 180 international film festivals including Cannes, Rotterdam + New York. 34 awards such as the Golden Gate Award at San Francisco International Film Festival and the Primo Premio at Arco Madrid Week of Experimental Film Festival. Awarded Honours for Art in Cinema by the State of Austria and again by the Province of Lower Austria. He has shown at MoMA, National Film Theatre, London, Cinemathique Francaise, Paris, With de With Art Centre, Rotterdam, Bozar, Brussels, Barbican Art Centre, London, Kunsthaus, Zurich, Hamburger, Kunstverein. Books on his practice include Martin Arnold Gross Anatomies,Martin Arnold Deanimated, A Critical Cinema. Reviews have been published in numerous newspapers including The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, The Village Voice, The Chicago Weekly Reader. He has taught at Universities + Art schools such as University of Wisconsin, San Francisco Art Institute, Bard College, CalArts, FAMU, + Stadelschule.
Credits
Black Holes, 2014
Single-Channel, Looping Audio-Visual Installation
Single-Channel, Looping Audio-Visual Installation
Andy Holden
LAWS OF MOTION IN A CARTOON LANDSCAPE, 2011-2016
Andy Holden’s Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape has been described as a dazzling journey. In the two channel audio-visual installation he becomes a cartoon avatar, giving both a lecture on cartoons and a cartoon lecture and describing how our world is best now understood as a cartoon. This five year project incorporates Greek philosophy, Stephen Hawking, critical theory, physics and art, the financial crisis and Donald Trump, while adapting 10 laws of cartoon physics to create a theory of the world and a prophetic glimpse of the world we live in.
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Biography
Holden lives and works in the UK. He has exhibited throughout Britain, Europe and North America, at such places as TATE Britain, ICA, Arnolfini, Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Venice Biennale, Kunsthall Winterthur, Kettle’s Yard/Cambridge. Holden has released several records with his band Grubby Mitts and co-runs the label Lost Toy Records. He was a founding member of the small, Bedford-based art movement MI!MS Maximum Irony ! Maximum Sincerity. The work in this exhibition is often presented as a live performance.
Credits
Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, 2011-16
57:00 min
2 Channel, Audio-Visual Projections
57:00 min
2 Channel, Audio-Visual Projections
Jennifer & Kevin McCoy
EVERY ANVIL, 2002
Jennifer + Kevin McCoy give us a suitcase that contains an explosive digital catalogue of audio-visual references. The artists have isolated hundreds of themed moments from the Looney Tunes cartoon series: (Every Fall, Every Explosion, Every Anvil). The visitor is free to choose and play any of a series of discs. Together the comedic pratfalls coalesce to reveal a forensic examination of our fascination with compulsive violence that is revealing, potent and thought provoking.
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Biography
A Brooklyn based couple who make art together. Each has an MFA in Electronic Art from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Jennifer is Professor of Art at Brooklyn College. Ken is Associate Professor Art at New York University. Their work has been widely exhibited in the US and internationally including Pompidou, MoMA, BFI, Hanover Kunstverein, Beal Centre, pkm Gallery (Beijing), San Jose Museum of Art, Addison Museum of American Art. Their work is held in the collections of MoMA, The Met, Milwaukee Art Museum, Speed Museum, 21C Museum. They are recipients of a Creative Capital Award, Wired Rave Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Headlands Award. They are well known for creating subjective databases of narrative material.
Credits
Every Anvil, 2002
Various Durations
DVD Audio-Visual Set + Video player in wall-mounted suitcase
Various Durations
DVD Audio-Visual Set + Video player in wall-mounted suitcase
Jason Salavon
ALL THE WAYS (THE SIMPSONS), 2016
Jason Salavon fuses every episode from 26 seasons of The Simpsons into All the Ways (The Simpsons) into an algorithmically mixed, audio-visual collage and a large scale colour mural that presents colour information for every episode from those 26 seasons, in a radiating concentric rectangle, arranged in sequence by season. This multi-media work comprises episodes spanning 1989-2015, 574 episodes, 17.7M frames. Not unlike an impressionist canvas, the piece continuously negotiates the space between representation and abstraction. The compositions chart the shift from standard to high definition resulting in observable, colour and quality changes.
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Biography
Born in Indiana, raised in Texas and based in Chicago. He has an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has shown at museums and galleries worldwide. Examples of his artwork are included in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago among many others. Previously, he taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was employed for years as an artist and programmer in the video game industry. He is currently associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts and the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago. Using software processes of his own design, Jason Salavon generates and reconfigures masses of communal material to present new perspectives on the familiar.
Credits
All The Ways (The Simpsons), 2016
23:00 min
Single Channel, audio-visual (monitor) + printed wall mural
23:00 min
Single Channel, audio-visual (monitor) + printed wall mural
Mungo Thomson
AMERICAN DESERT (for Chuck Jones), 2002
In American Desert (for Chuck Jones), artist Mungo Thomson bases his audio-visual work on the famous series of Road Runner & Wiley Coyote cartoons, first broadcast on TV in the 1950’s - 1960’s. Thomson strips the cartoon bare of all characters, their sound & action, leaving only the backgrounds which depict great, empty landscapes of the American West ; a disputed symbol of Freedom, criss-crossed with roads and signs of human intervention. In this work Thomson emphasizes “the role of the desert in the cultural imagination as a sort of pure and indomitable wasteland beyond civilization.”
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Biography
Mungo Thomson was born in 1969 in Woodland, California and lives in Los Angeles and Berlin. He attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1994 and received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Margo Leavin Gallery Los Angeles, the Kadist Art Foundation Paris, GAMeC, Bergamo Italy and the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Washington D.C. The Vancouver Art Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Thomson’s work has also been shown in several biennial exhibitions including the 2008 Whitney Biennial in New York the 2008 Le Havre Biennale in Le Havre France and the 2004 California Biennial at the Orange Country Museum of Art, Newport Beach. Writings on his work have appeared in publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, and Uovo.
Credits
Mungo Thomson - American Desert (for Chuck Jones), 2002
33:42 min
Single Channel Audio-Visual Wall Projection
33:42 min
Single Channel Audio-Visual Wall Projection
patten
CB-MMXVIII (I've been thinking of giving sleeping lessons), 2018
In this multi-screen, audio-visual installation, CB-MMXVIII (I've been thinking of giving sleeping lessons), Patten subjects Charlie Brown to all the digital stresses, distortions and manipulations available in 2018 ; testing his plasticity. Sampled texts from philosophy, science and critical theory criss-cross the screens, and are linked with scrolling images related to the natural world, DNA, systems, multiples; all serving to influence our reading of the cartoon character and the texts. A dramatically slowed down Linus & Lucy theme forms the ambient soundtrack. Patten have noted that Peanuts ‘dynamically interrogates the past and present’.
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Biography
This project created by London-based producer, artist and musician known for highly immersive installation, film, software programming, music, live performance, publishing, computer music, immersive audiovisual shows and a multi-platform approach. 555-5555 is the collaborative, online forum, ‘filling in the cracks’ left by social media. Their extensive catalogue of recordings span the outer edges of techno, hip hop, ambient, club music, grime, pop and industrial. They work with artists, musicians, + curators such as Bjork, Giorgio Moroder, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Liam Gilick + Susan Hiller and have presented their work at concerts, festivals and galleries around the world.
Credits
CB-MMXVIII (I've been thinking of giving sleeping lessons)
2018
7:55 min
3 Channel Audio-Visual Wall Projection + Monitor + LED Display
2018
7:55 min
3 Channel Audio-Visual Wall Projection + Monitor + LED Display