Suspended Animation brings together six artists who use digitally generated images as a tool to question conceptions of reality: Ed Atkins, Antoine Catala, Ian Cheng, Josh Kline, Helen Marten, and Agnieszka Polska. Their immersive environments confront the viewer with the actualities of the digital age, such as the dissolution of privacy, the digitization of identity, and the impact of a hyperreal virtual world on tangible physical experience.

“Technologically produced images increasingly influence and define our lives,” said Gianni Jetzer, the exhibition’s curator and the Hirshhorn’s curator-at-large. “The greater use of animation by artists mirrors directly this radical shift in our culture.”

Rather than mimicking the real, animation now challenges human consciousness and aesthetic perception. Reality is no longer the benchmark for the imperfect image, but rather the animated image provides the measure for an imperfect reality.