You think that maybe the animated GIF is the equivalent of graffiti on the digital wall?
Artist Ryan Seslow has been experimenting for a little while with that hyper eye-blitzing looping tag called the animated GIF – and today you’re getting splendid platter of GIFs like holiday cookies glistening before you. With bright visual references to graffiti history, culture and art, Seslow manages to simplify the vernacular in a poppy way that pushes the work into a playful cartoon realm – like the stuff on subway cars in the 70s. If the connection to Street Art isn’t clear, he has also been doing artful collaborations with a number of figures you may have seen on the street and in subway stations.
“It has been great fun so far working with Cake and Jilly Ballistic and we are making more!” says Seslow of this collaborative approach to GIF making. “I wanted to work with them both because they have great contrasting work that translates well on the street, subway tunnels and as digital images online.”
Ryan Seslow (gif © Ryan Seslow)
So far Seslow has been “trickling out the gifs one at a time” on his blog and as a project with RJ Rushmore of the blog Vandalog. They will be exhibiting their project entitled “Encrypted Fills” at the end of January for Concrete to Data in the Steinberg Museum of Art. Seslow’s GIF animations will include a host of other graffiti and Street Artists including Stinkfish, Broken Fingaz, General Howe, Caroline Caldwell, Abe Lincoln Jr., Gaia, Enzo & Nio, John Fekner, Olek, Ryan Seslow, Swampy, Peter Drew, Adam VOID, Rone, Enzo Sarto, and Leon Reid IV.
In the meantime all these jolting lights may make you think of the first night of Hannukah (tonight) as well as all the Christmas lights that are blinking from apartment windows overhead wherever you go on the street. Enjoy!