Ed Atkins has a reputation for the abstract and obscure to portray his messages. When I visited the Hammer Museum in Westwood, I had no idea what to expect. Before viewing Atkins' Even Pricks, I was not familiar with his style or body of work and I initially found the style almost jarring or disorienting, intentionally so.
After watching the eight minute loop a few times, a theme started to emerge as well as individual messages and commentary on modern lifestyles. The use of CGI provides Atkins with limitless possibilities and he really took advantage of that. As you can see in some of the images I both took and found of the piece, he juxtaposes hyper-realistic animation with physics altering effects to create a warped sense of reality and overlaps this with repetition of key phrases, symbols, and actions to give a sense of uncomfortability in existence.
Through his use of CGI, I can clearly see a major connection between many of the elements we have discussed over the course of this quarter from advanced computing capabilities to his animations of mercurial liquids which play into our discussions of surface tensions on the nano scale. We also see biological elements at play though his animations centering around mixing natural scenes with the unnatural, especially in his use of the primate narrating parts of his work in nature.
The messages that really come across to me personally are those of the ambiguous nature of symbols in our society. His main symbol used throughout the piece is a thumb constantly shifting up and down and even in one scene (pictured below) at the expense of the arm which is twisted and mangled as a result of the spinning thumb. This could be a way of looking at how arbitrarily value is socially assigned creating a confusing web of accepted or good verses the negative where the line is constantly shifting.
Overall I found this work to be a look at both the individual psyche in the modern age being torn and over stimulated by media and trends as well as a critical look at modern culture as a whole. Movies sell based sensationalist trailers and masses flock because they are told what is culturally valued.
Works Cited
"Ed Atkins." Cabinet Gallery. Cabinet, n.d. Web. June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cabinet.uk.com%2Findex.php%3Fed-atkins>.
"Ed Atkins." Ed Atkins. Serpentine Galleries, n.d. Web. June 2015. <http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/ed-atkins-0>.
GARTENFELD, ALEX. "Ed Atkins." Interview Magazine. N.p., Oct. 2012. Web. June 2015. <http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/london-ed-atkins/>.
Gavin, Francesca. "Ed Atkins on Bodily Fluids and Death." Dazed. N.p., 6 Jan. 2014. Web. June 2015. <http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/18084/1/ed-atkins>.
"Hammer Projects: This Is the End." The Hammer Museum. N.p., Jan. 2015. Web. June 2015. <http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2015/hammer-projects-this-is-the-end/>.
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