Gary Hill

Colors are exchanged, gestures are trans­formed into speech, language and images are decon­structed and regene­rated. Texts are spoken forwards and backwards, and from a loudspeaker membrane that is slowly filled with sand, one can hear that a voice is buried here. 

Active since the 1970s, Gary Hill (b. 1951 in Santa Monica, California, lives in Seattle, Washington) is one of the world’s most important video artists. His videos and instal­la­tions do not tell stories, quite the contrary: Using technical means, he orches­trates, modulates, and stages experi­ences or pheno­me­no­lo­gical phenomena that sow a deep awareness and a great deal of doubt for and about the construc­tion of percep­tion, its inter­pre­ta­tion, and thus so-called reality. Far beyond a mere critique of images and media, his works make us question our habitual patterns of percep­tion and judgment. With an inimitable feel for the concep­tual possi­bi­li­ties of the medium, Hill creates an awareness of the reciprocal relati­onship between image and language and makes tempo­ra­lity tangible in a special way. His art references everyday, personal, literary, scien­tific, and philo­so­phical experi­ences and themes. For Gary Hill, the medium is never merely a means of repre­sen­ta­tion, but always an invita­tion to reflection. 

Curators
Holger Broeker, Elena Engelbrechter