On these pages, Nick Kaye will lead an exploration of themes and practices of presence in Gary Hill's complex video works, which include single-channel video, projective and multi-screen installations, as well as site-specific and multi-media artworks and performances.

This process will begin with a mapping of critical ideas and terms, building toward an interlinked cluster of analyses and discussions.

To this end each page will offer links within the cluster to connect to for the purposes of elaboration, comparison and juxtaposition of ideas, images and commentary.

Illustrated pages are indicated by [image].



Uploaded Image

GARY HILL, Viewer, 1996
Five-channel video installation
Five video projectors, five-channel synchronizer, five DVD players and five DVDs
Edition of two and one artist's proof
PHOTO: Gary Hill
COURTESY DONALD YOUNG GALLERY, CHICAGO

"No one’s fooled when a video projector casts the image of a person upon the wall - and yet, it has its own reality, its own intensity of view. What shows up in this hypersensualized space is how these quite simple and ordinary people, whose living and breathing images are projected on the wall, are in fact quite powerful presences - unavoidably engaging and almost eerily present presences. Yet they are merely projections." (Quasha and Stein 1997: 19, original emphasis)




Times


presence and the times of viewing [image] | real time recording [image] | replay [image] |

Grammar


utterance | synchronicity | physical sound/image

Speech/Act


speech/sight | speech and presence

Object


opacity |

Body


text and corporeality | projection and physicality | absent body | part and whole | caesurae | desire | time | the resurgence of presence |

Site


sound | ghosting [image] |

State


suspension |



Uploaded Image

GARY HILL, Frustrum, 2006
Mixed Media Installation
Edition of two and one artist's proof
INSTALLATION: Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2006-07
PHOTO: Patrick Gries
COURTESY DONALD YOUNG GALLERY, CHICAGO



Gary Hill was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1951 and currently lives in Seattle, Washington. Originally a sculptor, Hill began working with sound and video in the early 1970’s and has produced a large body of both single-channel video works and mixed-media installations. His video, installation and performance work has been presented at museums and institutions throughout the world, including solo exhibitions at the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona; and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, among others. Hill has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, most notably the Leone d’Oro Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genuis” Grant in 1998. His recent exhibitions include the major installations Frustrum (2006) and Guilt (2006) at the Fondation Cartier, Paris, October 2006 to February 2007, and subsequently in galleries and institutions in the United States and Europe.



For further discussion of Gary Hill's work on the Collaboratory see Gabriella Giannachi, Gary Hill, Resounding Arches (2005) and the Presence Project weblog at [link]

Project-related publications include 'Media Presence: Gary Hill's Projective Installations,' in Nick Kaye (2007) Multi-Media: video - installation - performance, London & New York: Routledge, 131-41.


References