exhibitions - sacrifice
Jonathan Monaghan: Sacrifice of the Mushroom Kings
January 14 - February 18, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 14, 2012, 6:30 - 8:00pm
Curator's Office is delighted to present the first debut solo exhibition of Jonathan Monaghan, a young and innovative artist working at the cutting edge of animation. The exhibition includes an 8 minute computer animated film and two prints derived from the CGI film.
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The artist is a self-avowed video game fanatic and was highly influenced by video games from his youth, such as Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter. Monaghan plucks and alters the characters and environments from these games to create a new narrative. Succinctly describing the film, the artist says, "Sacrifice of the Mushroom Kings depicts a lamb and a bull's journey through my own version of Super Mario's Mushroom Kingdom. The film combines elements from iconic video games with a myriad of references, such as Wall Street, the Metropolitan Club, Bizet's Carmen, and hair products. Taking a comparative mythology approach to certain aspects of contemporary culture, the film aims to mediate basic oppositions such as good and evil, life and death, and reality and fantasy."
Although only 25, Jonathan Monaghan has already been recognized internationally for his accomplishments in digital animation. This past summer, The US State Deparment invited him to discuss his work and CGI in Bahrain. He has been invited to lecture at Ravensbourne College, London, College Art Association, New York, and Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has presented his work internationally at Atopio, Oslo, onedotzero_adventures in motion, BFI Southbank, London, GIRAF Animation Festival, Calgary, Interational Rotterdam Film Festival, Contemporary Art Centre of Thessaloniki, and the Today Art Museum, Beijing and Shanghai Doulon Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai.
A recent graduate of the University of Maryland and a former Hamiltonian fellow, he also presented his work in screenings and exhibitions nationaly at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD; Curator's Office, Washington, DC; Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington, DC; Conner Contemporary, Washington, DC; 4Culture-e4c, Seattle, WA; The Frostic School of Art, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI; Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY; San Francisco International Animation Festival, San Francisco, CA; Boston Underground Film Festival, Boston, MA.
image above: Jonathan Monaghan, Sacrifice of the Mushroom Kings film poster, 2011