Jonathan Monaghan at Bitforms

In Jonathan Monaghan’s latest fantastical animation, Disco Beast, a unicorn is captured and drained of energy by a predatory cell phone charging station only to be reborn in a luxury building’s hidden disco. Here, the unicorn is penned in by a ring of TSA scanners, an allusion to the Renaissance Unicorn Tapestries (which act as metaphor for marriage, among other things) and an update on the experience of being ‘captured.’ (On view at Bitforms on the Lower East Side through Dec 10th).

Jonathan Monaghan, The Unicorn in Captivity, 3D printed 18K gold plated brass, 3D printed porcelain, acrylic, 15 x 23 x 8 inches, 2017.