VIDEO ALCHEMY Experimental Shorts by Elizabeth Riley & Jeanne Wilkinson

One Night Special Screening: June 15, 7:30 pm

At the beginning of the new millennium, Jeanne Wilkinson and Elizabeth Riley left canvas for the computer screen and new forms. Their current work bridges mediums, echoing their histories and investigating wide open terrain.

Formerly an abstract painter, Jeanne Wilkinson now incorporates her paintings into complex and mysterious digital collages and animations. In each of her “Animated Abstractions’” one of her paintings journeys into the digital world, as if having a dream of itself. The “Night in the City” series depicts the vision quests and adventures of “The Painted People” (former Barbies, Kens, GI Joes) who travel the earth and beyond in eerie, dreamy sequences. Scored with her own musical compositions, her films have been screened at numerous venues, including BAM in 2010 as part of the Brooklyn Arts Council’s “Scene: Brooklyn” Film Festival, at Apex Art, in Art For Progress Shorts and Beats V. VI San Francisco film and music event, and in AFP’s “Forward Festival” in Washington, D.C.

Video, as well as installations/sculptures combining video and video stills, compose the terrain of Elizabeth Riley’s present explorations. These diverse works belong to an architecture of place, reflective of urban experience, including forays into the beckoning green hitherlands. Shot on New York City’s West Side – and employing a blue tarp as a metaphorical dividing line between self and other – “Liberty” is a narrative of the integration of the body and an individual’s psychological states with the city. The rurally sited “Party Animal.” is an experiential translation of a party’s engagement, abandon and temperatures. Elizabeth Riley’s videos have been screened in the US and abroad, including venues in Copenhagen, Berlin, Madrid and London. She is engaged with new work on a residency in Iceland in May 2011.