Artists featured: Cory Arcangel, Andrea Mastrovito, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Samuel Roussau, Bill Viola.
On the occasion of this group show dedicated to cinema, video art, and video animation, Mastrovito created and presented his first rotoscoping video animation, “Robespierre,” using 804 pencil drawings in which, through a series of refined graphite self-portraits, the artist comes to life and is liberated from the paper page. At that point, the pencil (Robespierre) that created the entire animation is broken by the animated character and thrown away, disappearing into the shadow cast by a vase placed between the projector and the sheet of paper.
The title “Robespierre” is a reference to the figures of “evanescent mediators” theorized by philosopher Slavoj Žižek.