Aaron Rose: Zoetrope Studies

Zoetrope Studies are a series of works that came to fruition when Aaron Rose was asked by the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola to design an issue of his wonderful literary magazine: Zoetrope: All-Story. The inspiration for the paintings came when he was in Mexico City to direct a short film. On this project he had the unique opportunity to shoot on 16mm film. When they received the first camera test he was struck by the image on my screen. There before him, slowly flickering into view, was a composition of five radiating circles.

What he was looking at was what they call a focus chart...a printed image used to make sure camera capability is of sufficient quality to shoot a film. What his imagination saw though, was something completely different. This image seemed to come from an alternate dimension. It was no longer a technical design meant to focus a camera. For him, it became a mandala.

The creation of these works is an automatic process where image becomes almost secondary to the action. This led him to go beyond the focus charts and create compositions of radiating circular motifs moving in multiple directions, representing the dichotomy between the technical design and a chaotic universe.