Dream States

Amy Bench Erin Cunningham Ala Nunu Moïa Jobin-Paré Shunsaku Hayashi Sofia El Khyari Sumito Sakakibara
Presented in partnership with ICOSA Collective

The work of five animation artists takes us on a fascinating journey to explore the pursuits of human connection and our relationships to technology & infrastructure, the natural world, and personal desires. The exhibition includes hand drawn and painted cel animations, as well as original artwork from the films.

In each piece, the filmmaker takes stock of the world as it is and responds in kind, playing with surrealism and varying tones of repetition, color, sound, and narrative storytelling. The works are a response to the seen, revealing unexpected, unseen, interiors that in some ways feel more real than their inputs.

Featured artists include Sumito Sakakibara (Japan), Shunsaku Hayashi (Japan), Moïa Jobin-Paré (Canada), Ala Nunu (Poland/Portugal), and Sofia El Khyari (Morocco/France).

Sumito extends his ideas about repetitive motion as a means of reaching a state of “Row”, akin to rhyming in rap. It could be seen as a perpetual “pre-state of being” drawn from a single painting, as keyframes are animated over a few seconds frame by frame.

Shunsaku creates paintings in which time has a linear progression, inherently creating an animated sequence. There is a metafictional relation between story and process: all time and movement is stored within the painting.

Moïa looks to the urban landscape, pairing scratched-on, large-format photography and stop-motion animation to study how we interact with the constructed world.

Sofia uses paint and parts of her own body as the brush, to reminisce on a lost relationship and the feeling of desire.

Ala asks, how would it be, to be without a head?

Curated by: Amy Bench and Erin Cunningham