Suspended Animation

Sadie Benning is not only among the country's most respected and influential video artists, she also broke cultural ground as a founding member of the multimedia feminist band Le Tigre. Suspended Animation, the first monograph on the artist and the catalogue of her first museum exhibition, introduces Benning's paintings and Play Pause, an ambitious new two-channel video installation.

Benning's videos, which she began making in the late 1980s with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision 2000 toy camera, are known for their explorations of loneliness, alienation, gender ambiguity, and her own developing lesbian identity. Her recent paintings–flat, illustrative, exuberant–are playful imaginary portraits that address similar themes.

Play Pause, created entirely from hundreds of Benning's drawings, offers a rhythmic and affectionate view of contemporary life in a city's streets, parks, and gay bars. Suspended Animation includes contributions from acclaimed contemporary writers Eileen Myles and Aleksandar Hemon and a conversation between Benning and esteemed New York painter Amy Sillman.

Specifications

• 8.25 x 9.5 in.
• 84 pp.