Distill Life - Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern approach both old and new media as form.

implicitart — April 22, 2010 — Short documentation of 14 works by Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger, for the Passing Between exhibition at Gallery AOP Johannesburg. Shot and edited in late 2009 by Sean Kafer, with musical score by Michael Szpakowski.

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern approach both old and new media as form. In their Distill Life works, the artists permanently mount translucent prints and drawings directly on top of video screens, creating moving images on paper. They incorporate technologies and aesthetics from traditional printmaking - including woodblock, silk screen, etching, lithography, photogravure etc with the technologies and aesthetics of contemporary digital, video and networked art, to explore images as multidimensional.

Meuninck-Ganger and Stern hack and tweak, shoot and print, appropriate and remix, edit and draw. Their juxtaposition of anachronistic and disparate methods, materials and content - print and video, paper and electronics, real and virtual - enables novel approaches to understanding each. The artists engage with subject matter ranging from historical portraiture to current events, from hyperreal landscapes to socially awkward moments. The works are surprising, wistful, enchanting, and seriously playful.