I don’t know when it started, but there seems to have been a newfound nostalgia for old-timey cartoons on social media. Clip edits re-emerge as short reels, with Tom the cat’s legs spinning around like wheels, while Jerry slides across the newly mopped floor as if a figure skater. Unserious gravity, exaggerated movements, and unruly geometries form a world that defies mundaneness. Artist Sam Dienst, compelled by the “irrational physics that moves the objects” in cartoons, explores precisely this sense of motion and unique logic in her handwoven tapestries.
At JLG Projects—a new initiative by Jane Lombard Gallery that rethinks how art is experienced through immersive and unconventional presentations—Dienst’s exhibition, Cartoon Logic, enlivens everyday objects like stools, bottles, or kettles in playful ways. In an interview with IMPULSE Magazine, the fiber artist and sculptor discusses color, chaos, and cartoons’ cheeky and disarming visual language.