Ratio 3 is pleased to announce Channel 2, the second phase of an extended exhibition surveying three video art practices. Featuring three animations by Los Angeles-based artist Takeshi Murata, Channel 2 is an overview of the artist’s recent video art production. By using computer animation and post-production tools beyond the scope of their expected uses, Murata creates rendered environments that are at once mesmerizing and confounding.
Star (2018) builds on Murata’s recent exploration of meticulously animated fixed video loops; like Murata’s recent Flag (2017), Star depicts a single object teeming with repeated activity. Star presents a computer-animated, star-shaped object suspended in cavernous space. A network of tunnels inhabited by luminescent termite-like insects comes into focus as the star gradually engulfs the viewer’s perspective.
By digitally reconstructing the artist’s former studio in Upstate New York, Nightmoves (2012) transforms the studio’s various objects, and the building itself, into an absurd and nightmarish environment. The video progresses from an uncanny, swirling overview of Murata’s physical surroundings into a fractured, mirrored deconstruction of digital space.
With Donuts (2018), Murata further complicates the relationship between physical and digital space by mapping a fixed-perspective video onto a computer-animated environment. What appears to be a cinematic tracking shot of a mother and child passing a strip mall donut shop gradually dissociates into a sprawling, disorienting scene. As the video progresses, the camera’s shifting perspective becomes increasingly suspect; portions of the original footage repeat themselves spatially and temporally, while visual cues are stretched and distorted.
Channel is a sequence of video surveys, and an overview of three distinct approaches to video art production. The artists whose works comprise Channel build narratives with documentary footage, construct new images through animation, and capture sequences in controlled studio environments. Channel is a series, a survey, and an immersive experience.

Opening reception: Friday, April 27, 6 – 8pm

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