Two related videotapes in which Gehr articulates formal connections between organic and geometrical forms, CF1 and 2 adopt the thaumatope structure characteristic of certain other Gehr's videotapes (Before the Olympics, The Morse Code Operator), rapidly flipping between two separate images. Here,...
"Film in its primordial state in which patterns of light and darkness are still undivided. Like the natural order of the universe, an unbroken flow in which movement and distribution of tension is infinitely subtle, and a finite orientation seems impossible." –Ernie Gehr
"Replete with visual and audiovisual humor, these works not only celebrate the pleasures of perception, as well as physical spaces and spaces of the mind, but also remain ethereal and multi-faceted in their formal and perceptual attributes. Rigorous in their construction, these films float...
"a five-minute film of the view west across the Soho street to a brick building. Gehr sat there from one day from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. and shot it with his Bolex camera, one frame at a time. It conveys the settled relief of being home, as against the pace of the monochromatic working day...
"The other Gehr installation, Modern Navigation, is a two-screen piece that shows people looking at fish in an aquarium. It is dark and mysterious, and seemed to me to be a witty and even slightly ironic comment on museum-going and art viewing in museums, which interpretation Gehr confirms was part...
"The concluding work is Circling Essex Crossing. In this piece, what arises out of a series of images documenting the construction of Essex Crossing is, for me, a metaphor for the evolving transformation of the Lower East Side." - EG
"The second piece on this program, Aproposessexstreetmarket, is what I consider to be the heart of the trilogy. It offers glimpses to the kind of activities I often encountered inside the old Essex Street Market, and I dedicate this screening to all the people who appear in the work—shoppers as...
A Commuter’s Life (What a Life!) gives sculptural dimension and kaleidoscopic novelty to footage shot by Gehr during his commutes from his native New York to Harvard, where he was teaching a seminar on the history of phantasmagoria, of cinema before cinema.
Ernie Gehr’s large-scale, multiscreen video installation CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS is simultaneously a reflection on early animation and genre cinema, a playful exercise in moving-image graphics, and an extension of the artists' interest in the abstraction, texture, and rhythms of visual material. Its...
"This mysterious, delightful film opens with a sound collage of jazzy music and voices played against a black background. After a few minutes, there is an extended shot of a young woman sitting at a table by a window with a slight look of embarrassment as she tries to keep a straight face under...
The 20th installment of the Auto-Collider series. "In 2005 we were still living in San Francisco, we were there for 18 and a half years, I really like the city very much but we also miss New York. When I retired and our son graduated from 8th grade we decided we move back to New York, one day after...
Sounds and images were recorded at the Polish flea-market, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, autumn 1989, a few days before the Berlin Wall came down. An uneasy, almost sort of carnival atmosphere pervaded the place and like some magical crystal ball, reflected both the past and the future.
“We are confronted with everyday images in a romantic way. If you are patient, you eventually see a deli sign that says ‘Carroll Gardens,’ a bike, a stroller. These images are initially obscured, but through repetition become recognizable, until Ernie intuitively knows when to cut once you...
