Experience Media Arts Watch at The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (MAG): Light Spill, an installation by artists Gibson + Recoder. Media Arts Watch is curated by world-renowned authority on the moving image, John G. Hanhardt, consulting senior curator of media arts for the MAG.
Light Spill, the second of four planned Media Arts Watch exhibitions over the course of a year, will run through March 26, 2017, and will feature two works by Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Light Spill and Threadbare. For the artists, a film is not an event that unfolds over time, but a particular material experience.
In this new installation the artists dismantle the components of the filmmaking system (celluloid, projector, screen, and light) and recombine them in new ways. As Gibson’s and Recoder’s work suggests, film is not only about images, storytelling and entertainment, but also possesses optical, mechanical, and sculptural dimensions.
What is Media Art?
Media art is artworks that explores the technologies and aesthetics of film and video as well as the emerging tools in the realms of video, computers, virtual reality, the internet, software, and mobile devices.
About John G. Hanhardt
John G. Hanhardt, is MAG’s consulting senior curator of media arts. Hanhardt began his museum career in the department of film and video at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and from there went to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to establish its film program and film study collection. From 1974 to 1996, he was curator and head of the film and video department at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was the senior curator of film and media arts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from 1996 to 2006. He joined the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s staff in 2006, and was a consulting senior curator of film and media arts there until 2016.
As a native of Rochester and University of Rochester alum, Hanhardt was inspired by photography, film, and media arts during frequent visits to the George Eastman Museum and by the programming of the Visual Studies Workshop.