White Room: Kristan Horton

White Columns is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by the Toronto-based artist Kristan Horton. Using a hybrid form that juxtaposes improvised sculpture, haphazard set building, and low-tech animation, Horton’s works explore the fundamental pleasures of making, un-making, and recreating. For his New York debut Horton will present his virtuoso single channel, stop-frame animated film “Cig2Coke2Tin2Coff2Milk” (2006), in which everyday objects – including a du Maurier cigarette packet, a Coca-Cola can, a sardine tin, a coffee cup, and a milk carton – are transformed – through a decidedly low-tech, yet highly self-conscious animation process – into new objects.

Writing about “Cig2Coke2Tin2Coff2Milk” in ‘C Magazine’ Yam Lau observed:
“The work can be appreciated as an instructional how-to sequence. At the same time it makes its animating movement palpable: a kind of structural morphing out of which novel forms and processes continually unfold. It is not only the inherent forms of objects such as the box and the cylinder but also their associated corporate identities (du Maurier and Coke) that are being morphed into one continuous movement. The duration of this movement is the subject of the animation. Within this process the intervals or stutters inherent to the stop-motion method help to facilitate new connections. These gaps signal the unforeseeable folds or wrinkles within what might otherwise appear to be a linear narrative. They are pockets that produce reserves out of which unforeseen connections and identities can appear. For example, a paper Coke can still bearing a du Maurier logo suddenly becomes within the interval of a new frame a tin one with the real Coke logo.”

Kristan Horton lives and works in Toronto, Canada. He studied at the University of Guelph (1990-92) and the Ontario College of Art & Design (1993-96). He has had solo exhibitions at The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto (all 2007); YYZ Artist Outlet, Toronto (2006); Mercer Union, Toronto; Wynick/Tuck Gallery (both 2005). His work has been included in numerous group shows including: “Self-Storage” (Curatorial Industries, San Francisco, 2008); “Signals In The Dark” (Blackwood Gallery & Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto, 2008); “We Can Do This Now” (Powerplant, Toronto), amongst others.

In 2007 the Art Gallery of York published Horton’s book: “Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove.”