Jean-Michel Rolland
Rhythmed by the race of five horses shot in Marseille Borély, this video, a tribute to Muybridge, doesn’t try to take the public into the universe of racetracks; instead, it communicates the frenzy felt during the breakneck speed of this painful race.
Jean-Michel Rolland, La Course (The Race), 2013, Digital video, 3’45”. Courtesy the artist.
Review from 22.dokumentART, October 2013:
‘Bodies of horses, doing their rounds as an amorphous mass. First soundless, this mass jumps and floats over the show-jumping course. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere like a thunderstorm the sound sets in and roars and races and bangs the mass across our retina. Jean Michel Rolland’s “The Race” is a post modern homage to Muybridge’s photo sequence of the movement of a galloping horse. Muybridge dissects frame by frame the nature, the energy and the power. The Race brings it all digitally together, is melting the visual layers, is adding the sound and catapults Muybridge’s legendary analogue series forcefully into the era of digital cinema. That impressed us with all its precision, intelligence and artistry.’
Jean-Michel Rolland is a French artist born in 1972. A musician and a painter, he melds his two passions—sound and image—in digital art (video art, generative animation, audiovisual performances and interactive installations). The result is a series of experimental videos, performances and installations where sound and image are so inseparable that one without the other would lose its meaning. His videos have been screened in French and international video festivals such as Vidéoformes, Instants Vidéos, Directors Lounge, Traverse Vidéo, K3 International Short Film Festival, Madatac, Screengrab, DokumentART, Cologne Off and much more. He has won several prizes, including the most innovative work prize at Digital Graffiti (Florida, USA) in June 2012 with his work Neons Melody, and is featured in an article dedicated to video art in Elephant Magazine n°11.
Convinced that dematerialization of video art is a strength and not a weakness, he allows anybody to access most of his productions on his website: http://franetjim.free.fr.