JEAN ROBINSON

2014

Oct 30

LUMIN-HAUS, RIVERSIDE PARK

Jean Robison is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist. Working primarily in video and the Internet, her practice includes animation, digitally manipulated paintings, photography and performance. Robison’s work reinterprets artifacts of mass media to explore how consciousness and perception are shaped by pre-digested imagery and information generally brought to us by movies, television and the web. Often infused with an unlikely mix of gravity and humour, her work embodies a hybrid sensibility that utilizes a variety of media to explore popular culture and documentary rhetoric as well as the mechanical devices of information delivery like cameras, screens and the printed surface.

In a body of work focused on cinema, Robison manipulates specific films by warping, looping and stretching brief scenes to tease out underlying messages of sexuality, banal horror and sheer pleasure of visual meditation. Many of Robison’s works invite viewers to exercise their imaginations or project their own fears and fantasies onto the art object. Her video work engages the viewer’s mind and body via large projection areas and dynamic audio components. Robison’s use of the Internet as a field of artistic material and delivery system allows for more personal and private interaction. This work absconds with coding typical to monolithic entities like Google Maps to analyze the physical actions and gestures of web navigation. Robison’s engagement with media undermines pre-conceived notions of art making and consumption. She often works in collaboration with fellow artists, programmers and actors exploring notions of authorship as well as ownership. Robison is a member of Finishing School a socially engaged artist collective that presents work throughout the United States and internationally. .

Robison is the recipient of awards and scholarships and her work has shown in numerous venues nationally, internationally and on the web. She is a co-founder of an artist residency located in Oaxaca, Mexico and international travel informs her sensibility. Robison has curated several exhibitions in the greater Los Angeles Area, participates in social engagement projects such as a digital artist residency and is co-organizer of an international flat file project, currently involving artists in Dubai, UAE, South Africa, Italy and the United States. Robison teaches at the University of Southern California.

Time has been a recurring theme in Robison’s work. Her work in video, film, animation, sound, photography and drawing is suffused with meditations on time, motion and stillness. These works have been an exploration in pursuit of an expansion/expansiveness of media. Video and film, though recorded, are seen as if in the present tense in that we actually see one frame at a time although there is the illusion of fluid and natural movement. Drawings and animation are a more static form and engage with stillness. Robison’s work generally has a peculiar relationship with popular culture and commercial advertising, both of which work on the subconscious and come to us in quick timely bursts.

jeanrobison.com