On loan from the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, the OJAC presents a series of short films by multi-media artists Liliana Porter and Lenka Clayton. Though their approaches to making films are far from similar, both utilize what’s at hand to make truly curious works that incite a gamut of emotions for viewers—ranging from angst to joy.

Argentinian artist Liliana Porter has often explored the use of everyday objects in her prints, paintings, and conceptual installations. Over time, Porter began to favor readymades with a toy-like appearance, which she represented isolated or in groups in the midst of the empty, undefined background that has characterized much of her work. Porter’s photographs and assemblages shift from still-life arrangements to miniature portraits that endow the depicted figurines, knick-knacks, and vintage toys with a sense of inner life. Through straight-forward stop-action animation, this cast of recurrent characters comes to life in videos such as Solo de tambor, where they perform in humorous, absurd, and sometimes moving vignettes.

In 2013, British artist Lenka Clayton attempted to objectively measure the furthest distance she could be from her toddler son in three environments: a city park, the alley behind their Pittsburgh home, and the aisles of a local supermarket. The trio of videos humorously underlines the challenging judgment calls that parents make about how much autonomy to give their children. Clayton produced these videos as part of a larger project, An Artistic Residency in Motherhood (ARiM), a grant-funded residency she created out of her own home “to explore the…upheaval that parenthood brings and allow it to shape the direction of my work, rather than try to work ‘despite it.’”

Stills from:

LILIANA PORTER, Drum Solo [Solo de Tambor], (still), 2000, edition 53 of 100, 16 mm film transferred to digital video, 19 minutes, 6 seconds. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 2003.106

LENKA CLAYTON, The Distance I Can Be From My Son, (still), 2013, edition 2 of 5, digitized single channel video, 4 minutes, 35 seconds. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Lora Reynolds and Quincy Lee, 2018.40