Versus Reality

Versus Reality The LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery 37 South Wabash Ave. Suite 106 October 3 - 24 A deer lies on its side, looking back from the corner of Monroe Street and Wabash Avenue. An LCD monitor is it’s home, as the deer has become the poster organism for exhibition, Versus Reality at the LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Passers by hardly notice from the sunlit glass glare, that the animal’s limbs are moving, glitching, and ultimately falling apart. The strong sense of a victimized animal exudes from behind the glass, and the urges of entry or departure are apparent. If the latter is a viewer’s choice, the animal featured in Amanda VanValkenburg’s 3D animated, Dear, is only the beginning of the exhibition’s strong approach to deception. Curated as a response to “the hyper-masculine gaming and virtual-imaging industries” (SUGS), The collection attempts to re-evaluate and investigate the idea of the feminine born by the worlds in which the utilized media is compiled. Before entering the the LeRoy Neiman Gallery, a wall seemingly protrudes and obstructs Pro, a 96” x 16” 3D animation from Snow Yunxue Fu. Upon further inspection, two fabricated concave walls create a convex seam for the animation to run. It plays as a moving pillar of simulated motion and jump cut color fields. The flesh-tones and alluring electronic pixels emanate light from between the concave walls and towards the viewer as they enter the gallery. Across the floor and installed on the west wall is an LCD monitor featuring Katie Torn’s experimental 3D animation, Monument. It is against an extended panel of black paint, that the animation plays. At the installation’s base is a curved extension of the wall, a nod to the disturbed, crying, statuesque seemingly feminine and digitally rendered figure featured in the haunting animation. Hiba Ali and Darya Zorina feature work hidden from the exterior front of Dear in the necessity for dark space. As a viewer proceeds to the east end of the gallery, Garden Party Ballet is a projected animation that transports one to a video-game first person perspective. The viewer proceeds at a slow, gradual pace through an animated forest. The digital fauna increases and slows in flame rate and glitch, a fitting metaphor for the context at and. At life size, the scale of the projection is a transportation method, an invitation into the bit-world Zorina has fabricated, and a suggestion to the worlds made possible by 3D fabricators, male and female alike. Diagonal to Garden Party Ballet and hidden from initial view is a fifth 3D animation. Untitled (grls) exists as a projection on a floor multimedia display. The rendered visuals drip and exude, as if the gallery floor has begun to leak, with abstracted forms suggesting a detailed view of the insides of the the collected works. The moving drop-like forms proceed across the floor mat at a slow pace, in conjunction with the soft, dripping audio filling the space. A visitor will consider the opportunity to sit down and don 3D glasses before a desktop monitor. A wireless gaming controller suggests a hidden console, from which Primal Nest spins. Sanglim Han’s creation is described as an “experimental” 3D animation, and features an interactive landscape of awkward, playful body parts-- limb mountains and digital lakes. Unlike Garden Party Ballet, the interactive controller suggests a viewer’s entrance to the piece as their Self, rather than another virtual character. This embodiment of self in a virtual space is a rich metaphor for Versus Reality’s subversion of power dominance in the virtual and real world. Through the steady din of computer-rendered sound, it seems that the works begin to connect to each other form-- in the uniting of media and borrowed 3D rendering tropes. Through simultaneous light, fallen Dear limbs begin to take shape in Primal Nest, and the viewer becomes implicated as the participant in the platforms offered. At a macro level, Pro becomes portal to its networked sisters, inviting the viewer to enter, even with a fallen female figure from Monument. In this collective grouping, Versus Reality is a strong arm, leg, character, and force in challenging the larger cultural norms on this plane of reality and the next.