Works on Paper: Handcrafted Animated Films

Works on Paper

Handcrafted Animated Films

Meghana Bisineer, Martha Colburn, Jennifer Levonian,
Peter Millard, Johan Rijpma, Paloma Trecka, Selina Trepp

Curated by
Clark Buckner and Sarah Klein

September 17th - October 22nd, 2022

Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 17th, 6:00 - 9:00pm

Telematic Media Arts is pleased to present Works on Paper, a curated screening of animated films by artists working with paint, paper, drawing, cut-out collage, and sculpture to produce time-based, moving image works. Attending to tangible materials, the films in this screening simultaneously foreground the artistic process and the labor required for their own creation. They mark the passage of time, giving it form and meaning as chronicles of physical change. And they show how – with the right degree of creative imagination, thoughtful attention, and sustained effort – the world is open to re-invention.

As a feature of their formal experimentation, in diverse ways, the films in this screening are richly playful. They are frequently humorous, full of wit and physical comedy. They are surreal, oscillating between fantasy and reality, objectivity and illusion. They are musical, punctuated by syncopated rhythms. They offer close, poetic observations, attending to the details of everyday life: city scenes, nature, shifts in light and the weather, facial expressions and relationships between people. They are also, at times, political, deconstructing ideological illusions through fantastical, even nightmarish, explorations of history and social conflict.

When first previewed at the 2022 San Francisco Art Book Fair, this collection of “works on paper” furthermore drew attention to the close affinities and subtle differences between the book and the film – specifically, the book and the analog animated film. At times, the films in this screening read like presentations of artist books or zines — in fact, one might venture to say, they are — raising the question of the intersection between the two and exploring the creative potential in the liminal space between them.