Roughly a century after the production of the first animated film, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presents “Suspended Animation.” The exhibition, which opens Feb. 10, 2016, brings together six artists who use computer animation in their work: Ed Atkins, Antoine Catala, Ian Cheng, Josh Kline, Helen Marten and Agnieszka Polska.
“Technologically produced images increasingly influence and define our lives,” said Gianni Jetzer, the exhibition’s curator and the Hirshhorn’s curator-at-large. “The greater use of animation by artists mirrors directly this radical shift in our culture.”
The artists in the exhibition use digitally generated images as a tool to question conceptions of reality. Their immersive environments confront the viewer with the actualities of the digital age, such as the dissolution of privacy, the digitization of identity and the impact of a hyperreal virtual world on tangible physical experience.
Animation today, however, is radically different from its beginnings, where its aspiration was to “animate” still images, to bring them to life. Rather than aiming for vitality, the artists in the exhibition create animations that interrogate the image itself. The term “suspended animation” is used in science and science fiction to describe the replacement of natural animation by machines that control and secure vitality.
Rather than mimicking the real, animation now challenges human consciousness and aesthetic perception. Reality is no longer the benchmark for the imperfect image, but rather the animated image provides the measure for an imperfect reality.
“Suspended Animation”
Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Opening 10th February 2016
Ian Cheng, Emissary in the Squat of Gods (still), 2015