Carnival of Shadows

Synopsis

Ernie Gehr’s large-scale, multiscreen video installation CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS is simultaneously a reflection on early animation and genre cinema, a playful exercise in moving-image graphics, and an extension of the artists' interest in the abstraction, texture, and rhythms of visual material. Its source is an early-20th-century shadowgraph toy, which used “paper print films" in the form of sequential silhouette drawings that were brought to life as they passed before a stroboscopic screen. Gehr’s silent, digital video adaptation transforms five original paper subjects, all issued in France c. 1900–05: At the Circus, Carnival in Nice, John Sellery’s Tour of the World, Street Scenes, and Gulliver’s Travels.