The Simpson Verdict
2002 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
2:50 minutes (looped)
Kota Ezawa
The Simpson Verdict is a three-minute animation by Kota Ezawa that portrays the reading of the verdict during the OJ Simpson trial, known as the “most publicized” criminal trial in history. In 1995, OJ Simpson—a well-known American football player—was accused of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Based on the courtroom footage, Ezawa uses his signature style to create an abstract and graphically simplified echo of what happened in the room. This re-enactment reflects the uncanny feeling of the trial footage, which was depicted solely through fixed close-up recordings (there was only one camera allowed in the courtroom). Zeroing in on the facial expressions of Simpson and his lawyers, Ezawa makes use of simple facial gestures, such as the movement of eyes and eyebrows, to highlight the emotional intensity of the moment. These expressions are minimal, due in part to the limitations of the artist’s animation technique. As the artist subtracts other visual cues, the most obvious way to distinguish people becomes their skin color, leaving the viewer with a comment on the racial implications of the trial and the unreliable nature of the verdict.
Kota Ezawa borrows images from the news, art history, and pop culture and turns them into cartoon-like stories. He produces flat and two-dimensional imagery via his light-boxes, works on paper, and animations. These works are often inspired by important moments in history, such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, the O.J. Simpson trial, and media coverage of former National Football League (NFL) player Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem as a symbol of protest. Ezawa’s animations, which he describes as “moving paintings,” make use of a labor-intensive technique that requires the artist to recreate each frame with close attention, producing hundreds of illustrations via digital drawing and animation software. He is best known for a signature style that embraces vibrant colors and simple forms, stripping detail from images to leave only essential attributes and environments. This reductive technique does not diminish the power of the image, as it turns to the familiar historical or cultural context to fill any gaps left by the artist’s erasures. However, the gesture also invites viewers to think about how these erasures might destabilize the reliability of public memories, highlighting the faulty process of collective remembering and what it tends to overlook.
Colors:
Related works of genres: » san francisco art institute alumni
» see more
© » KADIST
Barry McGee
Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner...
© » KADIST
Ana Teresa Fernández
2011The artist writes about her work Borrando la Frontera, a performance done at Tijuana/San Diego border: “I visually erased the train rails that serve as a divider between the US and Mexico...
© » KADIST
Sharon Lockhart
2011Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California results from Lockhart’s prolonged investigation of an agricultural center and community...
© » KADIST
Sharon Lockhart
2008Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...
Related works featuring themes of: » Animation, » Appropriation Art, » Art and Technology, » Collage, » German
» see more
© » KADIST
Ulla von Brandenburg
2007Eight opens with a close up of a painting by Hubert Robert of the Chateau de Chamarande where the film was shot...
© » KADIST
Wong Wai Yin
2021Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Other related works, blended automatically
» see more
© » KADIST
Kota Ezawa
2017The Crime of Art is an animation by Kota Ezawa that appropriates scenes from various popular Hollywood films featuring the theft of artworks: a Monet painting in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), a Rembrandt in Entrapment (1999), a Cellini in How to Steal a Million (1966), and an emerald encrusted dagger in Topkapi (1964)...
Related works sharing similar palette
» see more
© » KADIST
Eric Dizambourg
2010Like the film Le Mouton noir, this dimension is counterbalanced by a burlesque element...
© » ART & OBJECT
Colombia Wants to Recover $20 Billion from Storied Shipwreck, San José | Art & Object Skip to main content Subscribe to our free e-letter! Webform Your Email Address Role Art Collector/Enthusiast Artist Art World Professional Academic Country USA Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua & Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Ascension Island Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia & Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Canary Islands Cape Verde Caribbean Netherlands Cayman Islands Central African Republic Ceuta & Melilla Chad Chile China Christmas Island Clipperton Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo - Brazzaville Congo - Kinshasa Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czechia Côte d’Ivoire Denmark Diego Garcia Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard & McDonald Islands Honduras Hong Kong SAR China Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao SAR China Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar (Burma) Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands North Korea North Macedonia Norway Oman Outlying Oceania Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Islands Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Réunion Samoa San Marino Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka St...
© » THEARTNEWSPER
Renaissance nude painting row at French school sparks teacher walkout Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Education news Renaissance nude painting row at French school sparks teacher walkout Some students were reportedly “disturbed” by Giuseppe Cesari work which depicts bathing nymphs Gareth Harris 13 December 2023 Share Giuseppe Cesari's Diana and Actaeon (1603) Photo: Google Cultural Institute via Wikimedia creative commons A 17th-century painting by the Renaissance artist Giuseppe Cesari featuring five nude women is at the centre of a censorship row at a French school...
Related works from the » 2000's created around » San Francisco, California
» see more
© » KADIST
Julio Cesar Morales
2006Julio Cesar Morales’s watercolor drawings, Undocumented Intervention , show a variety of surprising hiding places assumed by people trying to cross into the United States without documentation...
© » KADIST
Jedediah Caesar
2009For Untitled, Caesar encased recycled objects such as scraps of plywood, paper or cloth in resin and then cut and reassembled the pieces into abstract forms...
© » KADIST
Paul McCarthy
2008Memory Mistake of the Eldridge Cleaver Pants was created for the show Paul McCarthy’s Low Life Slow Life Part 1 , held at California College of the Arts’s Wattis Institute in 2008 and curated by McCarthy himself...
© » KADIST
Raymond Pettibon
2005The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
Other works by: » Kota Ezawa
» see more
© » KADIST
Kota Ezawa
2017The Crime of Art is an animation by Kota Ezawa that appropriates scenes from various popular Hollywood films featuring the theft of artworks: a Monet painting in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), a Rembrandt in Entrapment (1999), a Cellini in How to Steal a Million (1966), and an emerald encrusted dagger in Topkapi (1964)...
© » KADIST
Kota Ezawa
2014Paint and Unpaint is an animation by Kota Ezawa based on a scene from a popular 1951 film by Hans Namuth featuring Jackson Pollock...
Related artist(s) to: Kota Ezawa » Leslie Shows, » Trevor Paglen, » Amy Franceschini, » Andrea Higgins, » Chris Johanson, » Colter Jacobsen, » Desirée Holman, » John Bankston, » Jordan Kantor, » Josephine Taylor
» see more
© » KADIST
Leslie Shows
Human Quarry is a large work on paper by Leslie Shows made of a combination of acrylic paint and collage...
© » KADIST
Jordan Kantor
2009Eclipse is a series of screenprints from Jordan Kantor’s larger vitrine installation that included reworkings of a single image of a small group viewing an eclipse through shielding cut-outs...
© » KADIST
Trevor Paglen
2017Trevor Paglen’s ongoing research focuses on artificial intelligence and machine vision, i.e...
© » KADIST
Chris Johanson
2004Chris Johanson’s paintings, sculptures, and installations break down everyday scenes and commonplace dramas into colorful forms; the darkest sides of humanity are invoked with humor...
Related works found in the same semantic group
» see more
© » PRISHTINA INSIGHT
Hague Court Cuts Kosovo’s Commander Cali’s Sentence by Four Years - Prishtina Insight Home Kallxo Jeta në Kosovë Drejtësia në Kosovë Gazeta JNK Log In Subscribe News Features Opinion Guide Big Deal Archive Follow @prishtinsight Former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Commander Salih Mustafa (R) appears for the first public hearing before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, in The Hague, The Netherlands, 09 June 2021...
© » KADIST
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
2021Dhuwã (term used by indentured people of Natal for ‘smoke’), is a single-channel film by Sancintya Mohini Simpson that traces back to the lived experiences of indentured labourers taken from India to Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) to work on sugar plantations during the late 1800s and early 1900s...
