Author Description

A paradigm shift in contemporary art is rare and hard to recognize at its inception, but that is what curators Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco have done in The Dissolve, SITE Santa Fe's Eighth International Biennial. The curators will present a new sensibility in the art of our time, a mingling of up-to-the-minute technology and traditional visual arts (painting, drawing, and sculpture) with dance, music, and film. The fundamental form of this new work is animation, uniting the technological (the camera) with the hand-made (drawing). The Dissolve will trace the development and reinterpretation of moving image techniques in wonderfully surprising juxtapositions. In 15,000 square feet of exhibition space, imaginatively designed by renowned architect David Adjaye, the exhibition will feature historic work from the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Fleischer Studios, as well as seminal works by masters of the moving image genre - Paul Chan, William Kentridge, Raymond Pettibon, Cindy Sherman, and Federico Solmi. An emerging group of exciting newer voices will be showcased to bring us the most recent developments in experimental forms. Among the many highlights of this biennial will be two SITE-commissioned pieces, offering important artists in the field opportunities to push their practice in new directions. MacArthur 'Genius' Award-winner, dancer, and choreographer Bill T. Jones has been commissioned to create a live performance piece for presentation at the Lensic Performing Arts Center. combining dance, movement, and video. A tenth anniversary updating of Ghostcatching, a work that animates Mr. Jones's body as three-dimensional, computerized drawings, will be featured at SITE for the duration of the exhibition.