An ongoing collaboration with James to bring new life to his visual vocabulary through 3D animation. This first volume of work, contains The Woodcutter, Spring, and Traveler.
“There’s a lot of similarity between both approaches. When you’re engaged with the canvas, there’s just a lot of push and pull. Pushing elements away and then bringing them back out. It’s amazing what you can do with simulations and rendering and algorithms. As a painter, it takes so long to be able to create a convincing semblance of these materials. But with computers, the distance between the mind’s eye and what you want to create is just much closer. That’s what I love about this collaboration and the whole medium." — James Jean
RoleS
Animation Director, 3D Production
CREDITS
Creative Direction / Original Art: James Jean
Audio: Nosaj Thing
Hardened into stone through diligence and labor, the Woodcutter self-immolates to reveal his flayed form. The fossil wood burns away to reveal its true colors, held together by pulsating veins.
In a cycle of renewal, the mycelium and moss regrow the Woodcutter, only to become fuel again for a ceremony of combustion.
The piece explores the relationship between artist, craft, and dedication by depicting the fiery sacrifice and self-assured rejuvenation of a young boy ruminating in a sun-dappled glade. His prayer-like posture belies the weight of the burden strapped to his back, suggesting a profound peace that is then amplified by the serene manner in which he endures the flaying fire that consumes his body. The entirety of his freighted form, seemingly composed of gray agate, gives way to an enlightened incarnation that melds with his collected labors, lashings transformed into pulsing arteries, blurring the line between symbiont and parasite.
The Dowser traverses the chrysanthemum, seeking nectar. The birds expose the flower's equator, revealing its aromatic syrups. In a prismatic celebration of Spring and its arrival, the birds and flower glisten with sculptural details, foiled linework, and dimensionally embellished drips and specks.
"There is an old engraving by a draftsman from the Netherlands, Hendrik Hondius, called A Unicorn Chasing Lizards from a Pond, in 1610. The unicorn points his horn down into the muck and drives away various reptilian and amphibian creatures. Some months after I had finished Traveler, I saw this etching by Hondius at LACMA for the first time, and was amazed at the similarities between the two images. Not only was the pose of the unicorn the same, my painting even had a frog at the bottom near the psychedelic soup of colors being stirred up by the unicorn’s horn. Sometimes I feel as if I am traveling through time and channeling alternate dimensions with my work, since it frequently feels out of place and anachronistic in the context of the contemporary art world. Perhaps there is an echo of Hondius that remains in the morphic resonance of the universe, and I have subconsciously inherited the memory of his picture." — James Jean
