Adam Chapman, "Diagram of Isolated Moments Forming a Memory"

Looking at an Adam Chapman work is an eye-crossing activity. His digital-video portraits literally coalesce as you watch, starting out as abstract blots and lines and shifting, second by second, into a human face. Viewing a loop to its conclusion is pleasing on a neural level, akin to the feeling you get when you recall that whatchamacallit on the tip of your tongue. The final artwork resembles an ink-and-watercolor sketch, and is displayed on a screen that is framed and mounted like a traditional drawing, so it's as if you're watching an invisible artist think a painting into being. Perhaps Chapman, who teaches at Parsons, the New School for Design, in New York, is making a statement about art as process; the compositions, he says, are generated by different rules each time.