The key to Ben Coonley’s work is a childlike sense of play. In “Moonley,” the artist’s first solo exhibition, now on view at Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, the past and the present collide in videos and installations filmed with a variety of cameras. A series of screens around the gallery’s walls display his silent stereoscopic 3-D “Compositions,” filmed with obsolete Fisher-Price Pixelvision cameras, while “Touching (Otto),” a collaboration with his cat created with a 360-degree 3-D consumer camera that fits in the palm of your hand, is projected onto a litter box. Coonley’s cat, Otto, a frequent subject of his work, also appears in “Trading Futures,” an installation that sits in the middle of the gallery. Viewers enter a geodesic dome, handmade by Coonley, where they encounter a 360-degree 3-D video featuring a host of characters, including Otto, an animated dancing baby, Coonley’s daughter waving a magic wand, and the spandex-clad artist himself. Coonley narrates the video in a didactic tone that mimics vintage educational videos, or a creepy self-help seminar.In a conversation hours before the opening of the exhibition, Coonley discussed his interest in the promise of 3-D technologies and his hands-on approach to building an environment to show his work.
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