I was especially excited by the work of four digital-video artists in their 20s, two from Chicago and two from Istanbul, several of whom are friends and have influenced each other. All four understand that abstraction is a necessary function of digitizing images, and their shorts, most of them silent, use the medium for its unique qualities of flicker and pixilation. Kyle Canterbury (full disclosure: a good friend of mine) took this approach in his earliest videos, but more recently he's turned his attention to close study of solid objects, noting the odd effects of rendering them on video. In February (Sat 6/19, 9:15 PM, Chicago Filmmakers), the slight video flicker generated by the camera's movements beautifully accentuates the variegated shapes of striated rocky cliffs and silhouetted tree branches. In Yoel Meranda's Bsorb (Sat 6/19, 7 PM, Chicago Filmmakers), a turquoise orb and the surrounding orange make for a stunning contrast, but the aggressive colors are also wildly unstable, with fuzzy shapes blurring and dissolving. In Eytan Ipeker's austere Cloud (Sat 6/19, 4 PM, Chicago Filmmakers), a sea of pixilated black and white shapes gives way to fuzziness and then suggestive pulsing curves, as if biological forms were starting to emerge. This same effect can be found in Jake Barningham's Concerning Flight (Sat 6/19, 4 PM, Chicago Filmmakers): brief glimpses of a flying bird lead to an X shape, and pixilations everywhere reflect the underlying geometry of DV as diverse forms collide violently, struggling to be born.Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark, $8; Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, $10; and Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee, $8.
—Fred Camper
bsorb from Yoel Meranda on Vimeo.
