Dani (Leventhal) ReStack

Dani (Leventhal) ReStack describes the creation of her moving-image works as a process of “accumulation and excision.” In videos such as Sister City and the companion piece Platonic (both 2013), ReStack collects and chisels moments, stories, and images, placing them within loose constellations rarely unmarked by the specter of death. ReStack shoots her own footage, often involving individuals who are close to her, but treats the resulting images almost as a bank of found material to be manipulated and recontextualized through montage. Her cutting is intuitive, not systematic. Micro-narratives of birth, aging, awkwardness, and pain gradually take shape without ever fully congealing, as ReStack allows her images to breathe even as she transforms their tenor through assemblage. The textures of the everyday are refracted through an intimate sensibility that dwells in the vulnerability of our fleshy bodies, our need for care and communion—and our cruelty. –Erica Balsom for the 2017 Whitney Biennial catalog.

Dani came to WSW in 1997 for a studio internship, and stayed to build our ceramics studio and direct the ceramics program. In 2007, she returned to produce her artist’s book Skim Milk and Soft Wax, which includes an accompanying 44-minute video. Dani has screened her videos internationally and her drawings are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Vassar, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Earlham College and Yale University. She holds an MFA in sculpture from University of Illinois at Chicago and a second MFA in film/video. She is currently an assistant professor of drawing at The Ohio State University.

Images

Artist's Book Collection

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