The Dissolve
A paradigm shift in contemporary art is rare and hard to recognize at its inception, but that is what curators Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco did in The Dissolve, SITE SANTA FE’s Eighth International Biennial. The curators presented a new sensibility in the art of our time, a mingling of up-to-the-minute technology and traditional visual arts (painting, drawing, and sculpture) with dance, music, and film. The fundamental form of this new work was animation, uniting the technological (the camera) with the handmade (drawing).
The Dissolve traced the development and reinterpretation of moving image techniques in wonderfully surprising juxtapositions. In 15,000 square feet of exhibition space, imaginatively designed by renowned architect David Adjaye, the exhibition featured historic work from the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Fleischer Studios, as well as seminal works by masters of the moving image genre – Paul Chan, William Kentridge, Raymond Pettibon, Martha Colburn, Kara Walker, and Federico Solmi. An emerging group of exciting, newer voices were showcased to bring us the most recent developments in experimental forms.
Among the many highlights of The Dissolve were two SITE SANTA FE-commissioned pieces, offering important artists in the field opportunities to push their practice in new directions.
MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner, dancer, and choreographer Bill T. Jones was commissioned to create a live performance piece for presentation at the Lensic Performing Arts Center combining dance, movement, and video. A tenth anniversary updating of Ghostcatching, a work that animated Jones’s body as three-dimensional, computerized drawings, was featured at SITE SANTA FE for the duration of the exhibition.
Exhibited Artists:
Robert Breer
Paul Chan
Martha Colburn
Thomas Demand
Brent Green
George Griffin
Ezra Johnson
Bill T. Jones & OpenEnded Group
William Kentridge
Avish Khebrehzadeh
Laleh Khorramian
Maria Lassnig
Jennifer & Kevin McCoy
Joshua Mosley
Oscar Muñoz
Jacco Olivier
Raymond Pettibon
Robert Pruitt
Christine Rebet
Mary Reid Kelley
Robin Rhode
Hiraki Sawa
Berni Searle
Cindy Sherman
Federico Solmi
Kara Walker
With historical works by:
Edison Manufacturing Company
Fleischer Studios
Lotte Reiniger
Dziga Vertov
Curators:
Sarah Lewis & Daniel Belasco
Robert Breer
Avant-garde multimedia artist Robert Breer was born in 1926 in Detroit, Michigan. Breer studied painting at Stanford University and after moving to Paris in 1949, he began to explore hand-drawn animation. Using stop-motion techniques and 4 x 6 index cards as his signature medium, Breer pioneered the revived interest in experimental animation and attracted international acclaim. His work, which incorporates both geometric abstractions and mundane images from daily life, explores color, form, rhythm, and motion with sharp wit and humor.VIEW ARTISTSarah Elizabeth Lewis
Sarah Elizabeth Lewis is an art and cultural historian and founder of the Vision and Justice initiative. Her research focuses on the intersection of visual representation, racial justice, and democracy in the United States from the 19th century through the present. VIEW CURATOR