William Kentridge: Phenakistascope
2000
Phenakistascope is the first kinetic sculpture edition created by the acclaimed South African artist William Kentridge. The title refers to a process developed in the 1800s to create animated moving images, and the edition uniquely combines the artist’s multimedia interests in theater, animation, film, drawing, puppetry, and opera. Directly mounted on the wall, Phenakistascope has a bronze apparatus that supports two gramophone records, which appear to be floating in space. The turn of a wooden hand crank activates gears that spin the records in opposite directions. When looking through twelve slits on the outer record, the beautiful image on the inner disk becomes animated, magically creating an illusion of fluid movement, in which the characters and objects such as scissors metamorphose into figures.
Details
Phenakistascope, 2000
Brass, wood, vinyl records, four-plate lithograph print on white Arches paper with chine-collé atlas pages
Prints: 12 in d / 4 in d (30.5 cm d / 10.1 cm d); sculptures: 11 × 12 × 23 in (27.9 × 30.5 × 58.4 cm)
Edition of 40 with 10 APs
Courtesy the artist