Salt Lake City, UT -  The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) is thrilled to presentThese Ribbons Are Substratum by local artist Justin Chouinard. This exhibition challenges the limitations of film through contemporary art.

Imagine film as wrinkled sheets of memory, or light that once mingled on a form, a body, a vehicle, a dinner table. In These Ribbons Are Substratum, analogue technology serves as a performer and medium for ghosts of experience past and altered states that are nostalgic yet foreign.

 

Justin Chouinard has manipulated 35mm film slides and 16mm film loops by hand, leaving the original emulsion, the skin of image, folded, layered, torn, and peeled away to reveal the bones of cinema. Audio comes directly from the flesh loops, speaking in rhythms and rustled distortions. Images will fall frail and break, passing to their next state and allowing the work to evolve and degrade again. View this mesmerizing and provoking work in the A-I-R Space, beginning March 17. The opening reception on March 24 will also include the new Projects Gallery exhibit by Gary Jacobson and a special discussion with photographer Burk Uzzle in the auditorium, followed by a trailer for f/11 and be there, a feature length documentary about Burk, created by film-makers David Raymond and Jethro Waters. 

Justin Chouinard, one of UMOCA's Artists-In-Residence, creates motion image artworks, performances, art events, sound art, media sculpture, and films. While often self-reflective and evoking the indexical nature of film and media, his projects suspend Chouinard's belief of cinema's triad nature: The cinema of light and time, the cinema of motion, and cinema objects. Much of his work exists simultaneously as both temporal events and nontemporal objects. He is currently based out of Salt Lake City, UT.

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) has advanced and elevated the community of contemporary arts and culture since it was established in 1931. UMOCA is a fearless voice for innovation, experimentation and dialogue surrounding the topics of our time. Located in the heart of Salt Lake City, UMOCA invites curiosity and promotes understanding of the challenging concepts that art and its reflective social commentary can present. UMOCA is a force for social transformation that unites all points of view, backgrounds, experience, and ages through pertinent art exhibitions and educational programming. UMOCA evokes change, challenges ideologies, celebrates triumph, and introduces an array of contemporary voices with in the Museum and throughout the community.

 

UMOCA is a five-time recipient of funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation and a 2015 and 2016 recipient of the Art Works Grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

UMOCA is a 501c3 institution that is supported by public foundation, and corporate gifts. Your donation in any amount is greatly appreciated, and admission is a $5 suggested donation.