Real Violence

Jordan Wolfson questions his place in the art world while ambling about a medieval cathedral.

The title refers to the main subjects of the artwork: animated cartoon Diet Coke bottles filled up with milk. Shot on video in Detroit Michigan, the characters walk through the desolate streets in real video sometimes in groups and sometimes alone.

An exploration of life, death, and identity through video, CGI, and animation. Found, performed, and commissioned.

Moving at speed over a receding white planar surface defined by rows and rows of identical black letters that spell out, again and again, ‘CHRISTOPHER REEVE', to the sound of etude-like pieces for piano played with a certain hesitance.

A ragtag troupe of animated characters—three rats, a young boy, an alligator, and two horses—engage with the viewer in a series of vignettes. By turns surreal, deadpan, and mischievous, Riverboat Song combines computer-animated vignettes and found video clips with pop soundtracks and a monologue voiced by the artist.

“Animation, masks,” the 12-minute 29-second film that is the entirety of Jordan Wolfson’s New York gallery debut, has the hallmarks of a classic. It rejuvenates appropriation art through the incisive use of digital animation, achieving an intensity that rivets the ear and the eye while perturbing the mind.

Dreaming of the dream of the dream is a 16mm projection consisting of images of waves that come and go continuously. The artist has assembled extracts of cartoons in which water is visible (the sea, bubbles, a stream, waves, etc.). Somewhat nostalgic, these extracts can recall either childhood cartoons or paintings by Hokusai. The continuous movement of the waves echoes the presentation of the film which also loops: a metaphor of life, a cyclical and continuous movement which nevertheless cannot be altered. The more the film is shown, the more the images become worn. The images progressively disappear with the scratches on the print. In fact, the work itself has a limited lifespan since the artist insists that the film should never be copied and that it should be shown until the images have entirely disappeared.