What is my work about?
Through an interdisciplinary approach rooted in painting and stop-motion animation, my work explores modern ruins, entropy, and temporality within the landscape. My animations are created by digitally recording thousands of slight alterations on paintings. In the process of creating the videos, which explore sites of ruin and entropy, the paintings become ruins as well. As the animations develop, the paintings become topographic ?terrains? of built up layers, correlating to the actual sites they depict. Ruins serve as traces that link past, present and future. In a sense, my painting process (and practice as a whole) functions in exactly the same way.
Artist Statement
There’s a paradox about the survival of works of art- I mean in our society, where art doesn’t serve any ritual or didactic purpose. The motivation to do it is the doing of it, the excitement of solving problems, but problems of a kind that can only be solved through actually making something, so that, at the end of the process, there’s this thing, the residue of activity. Now, once having made that thing, the artist really might as well destroy it, but usually they seem to prefer to let it go on existing.
-David Sylvester, from the Francis Bacon Interviews
Through an interdisciplinary approach rooted in painting and stop-motion animation, my work explores modern ruins, entropy, and temporality within the landscape.
My animations are created by digitally recording thousands of slight alterations on paintings. Approximately ten miniscule changes are made for every second of footage. In the process of creating the videos, which explore sites of ruin and entropy, the paintings become ruins as well. This relates to the concepts within the work, and the video excavates the painting, allowing its history and narrative to be revealed. As the animations develop, the paintings become topographic “terrains” of built up layers, correlating to the actual sites they depict.
“That monumental parking lot divided the city in half, turning it into a mirror and a reflection- but the mirror kept changing places with the reflection. One never knew what side of the mirror one was on.” The series “Enantiomorphs” explores this passage from Robert Smithson’s “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, NJ.” In each piece, photographs that I took in Passaic, NJ and Levittown, NY are mirrored by paintings.
My cut photographs are a simple gesture towards both presence and absence within architectural sites of abandonment. The images come from abandoned buildings that I documented in Flint and Detroit, MI, as well as Passaic, NJ.
Ruins serve as traces that link past, present and future. In a sense, my painting process (and practice as a whole) functions in exactly the same way.
CV
EDUCATION
2005 MFA, Painting, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
2002 BFA, Painting, East Carolina University School of Art, Greenville, NC
2001 University of Georgia Studies Abroad Program, Summer Semester, Cortona, Italy.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS (*denotes solo exhibition)
2015
*North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC. Curated by Jennifer Dasal. (upcoming)
2014
Pixel Perfect/ Analogue Output, curated by Nicole Tschampel, Westchester Community College Center For the Arts Gallery, Valhalla, NY
State of Emergency, curated by Lia Newman, Davidson College, Davidson, NC
2013
Talking Transition, curated by the New York Foundation for the Arts, Duarte Square, NY, NY
Lumen Festival, curated by David Terry and Esther Neff, Staten Island, NY
Flint Free City Festival, Flint, MI
Advancing Human Rights, AW Asia, NY, NY
2012
Empire Drive-In, curated by Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark, Abandon Normal Devices Festival, Manchester, England
Return to Rattlesnake Mountain, The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY
2011
*Nowhere is Everywhere, Wynn Bone Gallery, Annapolis, MD
Material Matters, curated by Kim Anderson, Sarasota Art Center, Sarasota, FL
Rising Into Ruin, curated by Lia Newman, Artspace, Raleigh, NC
The Constructed Landscape, curated by Lia Newman, NURTUREart, Brooklyn, NY
2010
Absence, curated by Hector Canonge, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY
The Paul Hartley Legacy, Lee Hansley Gallery, Raleigh NC, Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville, NC (traveling exhibition)
2008
*This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land, Wynn Bone Gallery, Annapolis, MD
2006
*Urban Form, Wynn Bone Gallery, Annapolis, MD
2005
MFA Thesis Exhibition, University Gallery, Gainesville, FL
CAA Exhibition, Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA
GRANTS/ RESIDENCIES
2014
Gibbes Museum of Art 1858 Prize nominee
2012
New York Foundation for the Arts Grant recipient
Yaddo Artist Residency, Saratoga Springs, NY
2005
Elizabeth Greenshield’s Foundation Grant recipient
FILM FESTIVALS/ SCREENINGS
2013
New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame Benefit, New York, NY
Northside Film Festival, Brooklyn, NY
2012
A Frame Apart 2: Queens Shorts Showcase, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY
High Tide Picture Show, Brooklyn, NY
Moving Picture, Performance Space 122, NY, NY
Speculation and Spectacle, Rogue Art Film Screening, Brooklyn, NY
2011
Los Angeles Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA
2010
Wassaic Project Residency Visiting Artist, Wassaic, NY
Watch This! Emerging Filmmakers, Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn, NY
BIBLIORGRAPHY
2015
Freeman, Heather, “Animation Projects: A Practical Introduction to Animation, Motion Graphics and Visual Effects” (forthcoming publication)
2014
Sturken, Marita, “The Art and Politics of Disaster”
2013
Piper, Matthew, “Free City & Jason Mitcham”, Miscellany and Mumbo Jumbo, May 4, 2013
2012
Perrine, Forrest, “Video Watch: Jason Mitcham’s Animation Created on a Single Painting”, Beautiful Decay, October 23, 2012
Fox, Michelle Higa, “Jason Mitcham”, Motionographer.com
2011
Benning, Daniel, “Animation From Jason Mitcham”, OEN, June 29, 2011
2010
Hilton, Robin, Exclusive Premiere: New Avett Brothers Video, NPR, All Songs Considered, July 14, 2010
Brown, Nick, The Life and Death of an American City, Set to Music, Struggling Architecture, December 1, 2010
Plitt, Allison, Developed Pictures, Times Ledger, October 21, 2010
Tuttle, Stephen, Classmates Reunite to Create Music Video, East Magazine, East Carolina University, Fall Issue, 2010
Entropy Via Overlay, Single-channel video and acrylic painting on board.
painting 20″ x 26″, 47 seconds, 2014
Ruin Rising, Single-channel video and acrylic painting on canvas
painting 30″ x 40″, 1 minute, 35 seconds, continuous loop, 2013
paintings each 30″ x 40″, 54 seconds
Scoring by Meredith Varn, sentence by author Marc Basch, 2011
Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise, Single-channel video and oil on canvas painting
painting 37″ x 52″, 4 minutes, 20 seconds
NY2014 Mitcham Jason 07 from Rema Hort Mann Foundation on Vimeo.