GARY HILL, Standing Apart, 1996 - DETAILS
Two-channel video installation. COURTESY DONALD YOUNG GALLERY, CHICAGO
Challenging the ability of the viewer to stand apart from ‘its’ projection, Standing Apart, and its companion installation Facing Faces (1996), enmesh the viewer into their time-structures while amplifying a doubling and division of the sign.
In approaching Standing Apart, the visitor finds themselves at the apex of a triangle defined by asymmetrical but seemingly identical projected images, while, for Facing Faces, the visitor encounters a doubled portrait of the same figure on monitors installed, similarly, at head-height.
Standing Apart, Hill notes:
involves two separate (slightly larger than life) colour images of the same man projected onto two separate walls that meet at the corner (…) the effect is that one image seems to gaze out directly at the viewer, while at the same time, the second figure is looking at the first figure. About every two minutes the images switch positions: the second figure now gazes straight out at the viewer, while the first figure gazes at the second. (Gary Hill Studio 2002)
Although mirroring the viewer’s viewing, Standing Apart introduces a disunity and multiplication into the experience of seeing and being seen.
For further discussion: the fold, reversal, the projected body, aura, recorded time.
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