TIME CAFÉ

FIERMAN is thrilled to announce _TIME CAFÉ_, a two-person exhibition featuring experimental animator and filmmaker George Griffin (b.1943) and his daughter, painter Nora Griffin (b.1982). Opening on July 9, the exhibition traces a visual sensibility rooted in a familial love of all things New York City, abstract art, and irreverent humor: Kurt Schwitters meets Pee-Wee's Playhouse. George Griffin, a foundational figure in the 1970s avant-garde animation scene, has made dozens of personal short films that have screened at international film festivals, on television, and at premier venues such as Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives, Metrograph, and the Museum of Modern Art. His work will be included in the upcoming MoMA exhibit _It's Alive: A Century of Animation from the Collection_ opening on August 1. In addition to his films, he has made artist books, flipbooks, commercial animation in the 1980s and 90s, and graphics and merchandise that utilize a cut and paste post-modern aesthetic. George grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee and has lived and worked in Lower Manhattan since 1967. Nora grew up absorbing her dad's art practice in the family's loft, a raw space that was divided between animation studio and living area. Her paintings are mostly abstract, but also refer to photography, ancient art, and pop imagery. She has had 4 solo shows with FIERMAN and is included in _Plants, Animals and Sky_ at CANADA this summer. The exhibition title, _TIME CAFÉ_ is taken from a beloved restaurant on Lafayette Street, in the heart of the NoHo neighborhood that was formative for both artists – one as an adult making his first mature films in the 1970s, and one as a child in the 1980s coming into consciousness. The centerpiece of the show is a wall of small (5"x7") drawings, a daily practice for George who is now in the early stages of Alzheimer's and finds drawing to be the easiest and fastest way to express his rambling mind. Faces--whether human, animal, or something in between, have always fascinated George. His 1975 film _Head_ dealt entirely with the mutable, often hilarious, dimensions of his own visage. The "square man" has been a mask-like creature that has inhabited many of his animations, as both an everyman and a stand-in for the artist. A monitor in the gallery will present a looped selection of George's animated work, including _Head_ and _The Club_ (both 1975), _Lineage_ (1979), _KO-KO_ (1986) and _A Little Routine_ (1994), his paean to the bedtime rituals of childhood/parenthood. The 1976 film _Viewmaster_ will be shown in a sculptural wooden mutoscope, one in a series the artist has been making for over a decade. A hand crank will allow the viewer to animate the cycle of characters forwards and backwards at their own pace. Nora will show a selection of oil paintings that both align with and take-off from her father's aesthetic. Both Griffins make references in their art to Eadweard Muybridge's animal locomotion series; the running cat motif has featured prominently in Nora's paintings, and George has used the iconic man-in-motion to illustrate the everyday magic of the moving image. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han notes in his book _Non-things_ that "the warmth of the hands is passed on to the things." This sentiment is embodied in the practice of father and daughter, through playful meta-references to their own handiwork and in their insistence on the materiality at the heart of art making.