“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. Fluidly combining animation, photographs, clip-art and extraordinary color, this piece is like an exquisitely made Fabergé egg that explodes in your face. It contrasts various modes of representation, degrees of resolution and forms of aural communication (lovers’ pillow talk, poetry and song); implicates history and art history; and invokes several ethnic stereotypes. Its only character is a jarringly stereotypical Shylockian Jew, with hooked nose, yarmulke, frizzed hair and beard and misshapen teeth, who is rendered in sleek high-definition animation (but only from the waist up). Sometimes benign, sometimes demonic, this gnomic cross between a Hasidic Woody Allen and a Semitic Yosemite Sam lip-syncs the sexy, whispered dialogue of a pair of young lovers that evokes the indie-film subcategory known as mumblecore, while executing repeated rap-music hand gestures. Next, in a jump in DIY history, the voices of different people reciting Richard Brautigan’s 27-word, alone-and-happy “Love Poem” flow from his lips, its implications fluctuating with each speaker. Meanwhile, images of largely white affluence abound. The Shylock character flips through recent issues of Vogue …
Video Rating: 0 / 5