NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE.- Sebastian Buerkner’s award-winning 3D installation The Chimera of M. transforms The Gallery at Tyneside Cinema into a dreamlike virtual space of stereoscopic digital animation. Wearing 3D glasses, audiences experience an enigmatic and stylised landscape through the eyes of the protagonist, as he considers questions of longing, intimacy, identity and loss.

Returning to a town where he once lived, Buerkner’s mysterious unseen character attempts to reconnect with two abandoned relationships from his past: one with a man, one with a woman. His motives are revealed through a stream of fractured conversations, arguments and intimate encounters, filtered through his compromised point-of-view.

Buerkner's practice uses a sophisticated visual language and challenges perceptions of time, space and reality through fantastical worlds and fragmented narratives. Although his background is in painting, the artist has worked primarily in animation since 2004, combining cutting-edge digital technology with layered, abstract imagery to create works that explore the nature of film and moving image.

The Chimera of M. won the Tiger Award for Short Film at the 2014 Rotterdam Film Festival and was nominated in the short film category of the 2014 European Film Awards. Buerkner was also awarded a broadcast commission for Channel 4’s short-form arts strand, Random Acts, to be screened in 2015. The Chimera of M. is presented as an installation in The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema's new exhibition space dedicated to artists' moving image.

Buerkner's installation in The Gallery follows Tyneside Cinema's long-standing commitment to supporting and exhibiting ground-breaking digital artworks, including Mariner 9 by Kelly Richardson in 2012 and Sniff by Karolina Sobecka in 2013. The Chimera of M. follows White Hole by John Smith, Chromatic Aberration by Aura Satz, and Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s EDIT and 20,000 Days on Earth that formed the opening programme for The Gallery, in September 2014.

In March 2015, The Gallery presents Letter of Complaint, a new work by Rachel Reupke commissioned by Cubitt in partnership with Tyneside Cinema; and in May, artist-in-residence Mikhail Karikis presents a new work commissioned by Tyneside Cinema.