Jan. 26, 2013 - Apr. 20, 2013
Born in San Diego, 1978; Lives and works in Los Angeles
Mound, 2011, video, 4:23 min.
Alison Schulnik creates worlds composed of matter, movement, and color. She combines animation with a stop-motion technique and crude clay figures, which provoke a sense of emotional excitement and sentimental identification.
Mound features dozens of lumpy figures composed of oil-based clay, fabric, feathers and additional materials, and which perform small human gestures as they move slowly to a 1969 recording of Scott Walker’s song “It’s Raining Today.”
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This work is composed of mini-scenes cast in clay: figures moving along circular trajectories, vacillating between life and death; women hoisted up into the air by a crowd; or a theater curtain raised to reveal the despondent movements of rag-clad dancers.
The use of white clay, which is accented by pastel hues, underscores the figures’ human gestures. They seem to melt or to be welded into one another, so that the remains of one figure form a new figure, and the embrace of two figures creates a third. Their faces and bodies are transformed in a constant state of flow reminiscent of the cyclical nature of the universe. These nearly abstract figures, with their wide-open eyes, represent an existential beginning and end and emotions such as joy, sadness, pain and compassion – a human drama cast in clay.
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