Falling Silk

Jennifer Steinkamp

Details

Western Bridge, 3412 Fourth Ave. S., www.westernbridge.org, 838-7444. Ends March 29.

Related Content

• Visual Arts: SAM's Scrambled Survey of Asian Art
  October 19, 2011
• Ryan Henry Ward Paints the Town
  September 7, 2011
• Seattle Scholar Takes on Modern Mochi
  January 30, 2012
• The Fussy Eye: Nuclear Family
  January 25, 2012
• Two Things To Discover This Morning: New Clams Casino Track "Wizard"; Adult Swim Singles Program
  July 26, 2011

More About

• Lehmann Maupin
• Jennifer Steinkamp
• Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
• Visual Arts
• Cartoons and Animation

Cast upon a tall wall in the central gallery space of Western Bridge, images of striped silk squares tumble from ceiling to floor. The falling takes place over and over, and becomes repetitive, hypnotic. Jennifer Steinkamp's continuously looped film, Formation G, depicts an animated series of colorful squares, shiny, delicate, and thin, with stripes that exaggerate the silklike texture. Stand still long enough and you'll begin to observe a certain pace to the falling. Close to the ceiling, the silk drops slowly, but when it reaches the middle of the wall, it seems to accelerate. And then another square appears at the top, beginning its own slow fall. One after another, these shapes tumble over themselves in a seemingly endless riff on gravity—and, perhaps, loss. Similar installations have been seen at Lehmann Maupin in New York and at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. As the artist's site reads, this work is "variable, approx. 8–12 feet high, vertical, fits between edge of floor and ceiling."