Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Christian Marclay: Six New Animations from April 28 through June 25, 2016, at 49 Geary Street, San Francisco. The exhibition highlights six entirely new works by Marclay and marks their worldwide debut. Later this summer the works will receive their first European screening at Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France.
Each animation focuses on a particular object, commonly discarded: cigarette butts, bottle caps, chewing gum, cotton swabs, plastic lids and straws. Countless photographs, taken at different times and on different streets, constitute the frames of each animation.
These static photographs are then edited into sequences which, played back in rapid succession, give the illusion of motion: burnt cigarettes grow back; colorful bottle caps flash and blend; hairy cotton swabs wiggle; blobs of chewing gum divide and multiply like cells; and plastic straws rotate like clockwork.
Unlike traditional animation in which the setting is consistent and spatial continuity is maintained, in this work the background changes frantically. The flickering images recall flip-books, early cinema, and animation devices of the late nineteenth century, such as the zoetrope used by Eadweard Muybridge.
