Andrew Thomas Huang is an arts director and a filmmaker who lives and works in the city of Los Angeles in the United States of America. He graduated in 2007 from the University of Southern California where he used to study Fine Arts and Animation. Since 2007, his video works and artistry have been exhibited and showcased at the Museum of Modern Art, Saatchi New Director Showcase, The Hammer Museum, Postmasters Gallery, and The Barbican centre in London and the Museum of Contemporary arts in Los Angeles (Huang). Through his experience, and having worked in collaboration with artists like Bork from Iceland among others, he has developed a good reputation in the film and arts industry thereby bridging the gap between film art and video art (Hallam).
Huang was listed among the new faces in the film and arts industry by the Filmmaker magazine and was awarded for being the best new director at the United Kingdom Video Music awards of 2017. He is noted for his excellent combination of live action, visual effects, visual aesthesis and mixed media. While working with Bork and Sigur Ros, he directed several videos, which made milestone achievements during their time (Ainley). In addition to his work experience, he has also collaborated with Thom Yorke from Radiohead from where he met Atoms for Peace. Some of the amazing films he has directed include Soliplist, which was awarded for the best film in the 2012 Special jury, Interstice, Rift, Before Your Very Eyes, Doll face among others. Followers of art films done by Andrew Thomas Huang describe his pieces as mind-blowing, fantastic while some described his artistry as those that have never existed before in the film making industry. He will be remembered for his extraordinary videos, a legacy that will be hard to cope up with by any filmmaker in the visual arts and film making industry (Huang).
One of the most amazing artistic films that were done by Andrew Thomas Huang was the Interstice. It was produced by Sophia Rothbart in collaboration with artists Brixx, Slicc and Bones the Machine. From an illusive visionary, interstice presented a veil with a fantastic vision of a magic trick. In the film, a sharp reddish skin that keeps shifting upwards while loaded with some brilliant energy keep manipulating its image and identity (Huang). The images of spatial dimensions that are temporary keep molding in the film thus becoming the main source of visual concentration for a viewer. Interstice is a film that brought an attempt to see through an interstitial space between a veil that was obstructive, hence referred to as interstice. Most importantly, is the traditional lion dancing aspect in the film that keeps pulling the fabrication that was trailing behind (Hallam).
Interstice incorporated sound, dance and religious ideologies while deploying digital prints and multisensory installations in a surrealist experiment. In the film, the artist avoids incorporating things of religious metaphor. He is more focused on conveying political and spiritual statements as the main theme of his piece of art, in other words an anthropological conveyance of sorts. The film is divided into several segments viewed and postponed chronologically (Hallam). A fabric that is laid and a canopy can be viewed throughout the show. The filmmaker is focused with the idea of psychological dissociation because of the presence of the veil that has the characteristic of concealing and revealing things in a simultaneous manner. The whole idea was brought from the aspect of space, which is, crossing space boundaries and traversing through space. The space itself was a symbol of the answers that human beings keep searching in vain in their daily lives as they struggle to see themselves through these troubles.
Andrew Thomas Huang is used to using different styles in his artistry work, with most of them dominated by traditional dances, puppetry antics, facial alphabetic and inventive and, tormenting animations through collaborative practices that have exceeded the existing creative talents and ambitions (Film Premier). Additionally, his works are full of deep aspects of colorization and paintings, which bring the powerful use of colors by artist in the 21st century (Huang). The artists existing today use colors to bring out various themes and symbols to the viewers and the society at large. For instance, Andrew Thomas uses deep red fabric in the film Interstice to steal the concentration of the viewers into trying to understand real theme of the piece. Andrew Thomas’ most dormant style in his artistry career is the use of puppets. He uses puppets in a majority of his artistry and filmmaking career in a number of short films like Solipsist and Before Your Very Eyes. This is due to the invasion of puppetry into the industry of filmmaking in the 21st century (Hallam).
On the other hand, the use of animation is also a common style among the visual artistry works by Andrew Thomas Huang. By the use of computerized film and technologically improvised video images, the creativity of a majority of Andrew’s visual arts work’s evident. In the film interstice, animation and graphics form an integral part of the film that makes it more eye-catching to the audience on a broader perspective (Interstice). Without the use of the above styles, the films by Andrew would have no meaning since they form the basis of the filmmaker in trying to bring out his message to the society.
Andrew Thomas has done several artworks throughout his career in the filmmaking industry. As outlined earlier, some of his most amazing short films in addition to interstice include Soliplist, Doll Face and Before Your Eyes among others. Soliplist is a unique live action footage, which involves puppetry, a human body and intense animation that created a fantasy world to the viewers. It focuses on the beings of the world whose body and minds are converges into a single entity. It is full of visual effects, elaborate costumes and underwater puppets that take the viewer into a journey of dream (Hallam).
We can do it today.
On the other hand, Before Your Eyes was another masterpiece of art made courtesy of Atoms of Piece that took the film artistry to another level. It comprises of a remarkable combination of computer effects and in-camera activities. Before Your Eyes is an eye-catching tour of crumbling cites, mountain ranges and psychedelic caves with a pulsating sound (Huang). This film is one of a kind where we see Huang on a mission to explore the aspects between technologically driven and organic artistry or the relationship that exists between digital and analogue film making (Film Premier). In his latest interview with Boom 2015, he promised to come up with something darker and natural, and that he is more of done with colorful artistry and sandy stuff.
- Ainley, Nathaniel (2015). Pierce the Veil of Andrew Thomas Huang’s ‘Interstice’ [Exclusive].
- Andrew Thomas Huang’s interstice. Nighton Broadway.
- Hallam, Patricia. (2015). Filmmaker Focus: Andrew Thomas Huang.
- Huang, Andrew (2016). Andrew Thomas Huang.
- Huang, Andrew (2016). Solipsist.
- Huang, Andrew (2013). Before Your Very Eyes.
- Huang, Andrew. (April 2015). Interstice.
- INTERSTICE (2016): An installation by Andrew Thomas Huang.