Still Life Comes Alive with Jennifer Steinkamp’s Animated Installations

Description

Steinkamp, a pioneer in the field of 3-D animation, utilises computer technology to create digital media, in which organic and abstract forms are rendered in motion. Still-Life consists of three immersive exhibits that alter the viewer’s typical experience of an object within a gallery and invites a more comprehensive understanding of space and time.

The titular centrepiece of the exhibition Still-Life (2019) , reimagines and animates typical still life subjects through the representation of fruit bearing plants that move and collide in a poetic dance that celebrates life and regeneration through the natural environment.

Also featured is her suite of animations Blind Eye 2 (2019), a depiction of a pair of birch trees with characteristic dark spots that resemble blank, staring eyes, as the trees sway and the leaves fall like a gentle rain. As with all Steinkamp’s other works, the process is perpetual, which allows the work to exist outside the linear narrative of the allusion to changing seasons.

The exhibition draws inspiration from important art historical predecessors and provides a valuable reminder of the breadth and ambition of her practice as she simulates natural movement in cycles that are at once familiar-seeming and entirely unique.