Motion Studies: Five Contemporary Animators

October 24 – November 24, 2019

Opening Reception and Gallery Talk: Friday, November 1, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
(Gallery Talk with artists Jane Cheadle and Eric Dyer at 5:15 p.m.)
Animation screening and talk with Joshua Mosley: Monday, November 11, 7.p.m.,
Tang Museum Somers Room

The Schick Art Gallery is excited to present Motion Studies: Five Contemporary Animators, featuring the work of Jane Cheadle, Eric Dyer, Hirotoshi Iwasaki, Joshua Mosley, and Allison Schulnik. Each of these artists investigates experimental techniques, and each creates all aspects of their animations, without a studio of assistants. Numerous sketches, props, short working videos, and other process material will be exhibited along with finished animations. Motion Studies is curated by Studio Art Professors Sarah Sweeney (Digital and Time-based Media) ad Paul Sattler (Drawing and Painting.)

Discussing her spare and lovely animation Flow, which depicts the act of pouring white paint over a rotating black disk, Jane Cheadle writes, ‘I realized that if I was as interested in material qualities as I thought I was, then I should let them take the lead; I should find ways to ‘get out of the way’ and let the materials animate themselves.’  Her drawings and animations have been exhibited at many venues, including Semaphore Gallery in Switzerland and the New York Drawing Center’s online platform. She is the author of the Moving Image: Animation course at the Open College of the Arts based in South Yorkshire, England, and is currently an associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, England.

Eric Dyer brings animation into the physical world; his work builds upon Victorian Era optical devices such as the zoetrope, and explores our relationship with technology and physical presence in an increasingly digital world. His film Copenhagen Cycles was made by creating and then photographing paper sculptures; Motion Studies will include both the film and some of the paper sculptures.

Dyer’s work has been widely exhibited at venues such as the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, Ars Electronica, the screens of Times Square, and the Cairo and Venice Biennales. He has been honored as a Fulbright Fellow, Creative Capital Artist, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Dyer teaches visual arts and animation at UMBC in Baltimore, MD, and is represented by Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York.

Hirotoshi Iwasaki’s animation Dark Mixer presents beautifully drawn images of humans and animals repeating isolated motions. Dark Mixer was created using rotoscoping, a technique animators use to trace over motion picture footage frame by frame. In this way, Iwasaki extracted motion from existing video, and then transposed and altered it, creating an effect of dream-like displacement.  Iwasaki graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts with Doctor's degree in Contemporary Arts in 2019, and received the Grand Prix at Image Forum Festival 2010 in Japan. Dark Mixer won the Grand Prix for non-narrative short at Holland Animation Film Festival in 2015.  

Joshua Mosley’s thoughtful animations explore learning, perception, and our understanding of ourselves; they often feature characters – many drawn from the history of philosophy, economics, or literature - puzzling out what it means to be human. The work begins with extensive research, drawings, and meticulously crafted sculptures and props; eventually these are photographed and then animated using various computer platforms. His work has exhibited at numerous art institutions, including the 2007 Venice Biennale, the 2014 Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the Art Institute of Chicago, IL. Mosley is Professor of Fine Arts in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

Allison Schulnik uses painting, ceramics, and stop-motion animation to choreograph her figurative subjects in compositions that are both funny and macabre; the New York Times has compared her to the “comic-grotesque visionary James Ensor.” Schulnik’s films have been included in internationally renowned festivals and museums, including the Hammer Museum and the LA County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, CA; the Ottawa International Animation Festival (where her work received the Best Experimental Animation award); and the South x Southwest Film Festival (where she received the Special Jury Prize.)  Solo exhibitions include the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT. She is represented by PPOW Gallery in New York, NY, and ZieherSmith Gallery in Nashville, TN.

Three of the artists will visit the Skidmore campus and meet with Studio Art students; these visits include the following public events:

• Jane Cheadle and Eric Dyer will be present at the opening reception on Friday November 1, and will speak briefly about their work.
• Joshua Mosley will screen his animations and discuss them on Monday, November 11 at 7 p.m. in the Somers Room of the Tang Teaching Museum.

Schick Art Gallery events are free and the public is welcome. The gallery is located in the Saisselin Art Building; a map of the Skidmore campus may be found on the Skidmore College website.

Gallery hours: M – Th 10 – 6, F 10 – 4, Sa / Su 12 - 4
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