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| Encaustic, Movie Reviews | |
Here’s a piece of gorgeousness I thought you’d enjoy. Silver, a 10-minute experimental film by Takeshi Murata. The technique is called datamoshing and according to critic, Ed Halter, it’s poised to hit big. Halter spoke at First Person Cinema in Boulder last week. His topic, new materialism, referred to recent video (post 1990) in which the physical properties of video media – pixillation, distortion, noise, etc. – are strongly present in how the viewer experiences the work. It’s a vein of imagemaking that harkens back to experimental filmmaking of the 1950′s through 70′s when artists like Stan Brackhage scratched, painted, eroded and collaged on emulsion to make handmade films analogous to abstract expressionist painting. If the work of mid-century experimental filmmakers paralleled that of painters, is there a current materialist, painter analogy to make? While mid-century abstract painting placed importance on gesture and the mark of the individual artist, current abstraction has a more materialist feel in which the physical properties of paint – texture, transparency, hue, etc. – are strongly present. This is especially true if you look at what’s happening in the world of encaustic. Wax paint, prized for its surface qualities, is surging in popularity. Esteemed painters like Joanne Mattera, Laura Moriarty and Paula Roland are making works that revel in paint’s physicality. The paintings Silver most reminds me of are Cecily Brown’s fleshy works in oil on linen. What links all these works, I think, is awareness of being present in a body that can perceive, see, sense, feel, hear and touch. There is joy in physicality, and wonderment at being alive. | |
