grey to white represents a fusion of two formal extremes in the service of a provocative, emotional experience. On the one hand, the composition continues the visual ambitions of early experimental film artists like Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttman, Viking Eggeling, and others. These early experiments explored the perceptual limits of the medium, the mechanical possibilities in moving images, and our capacity to embrace abstract form.
On the other hand, grey to white draws on the stylistic vocabulary of more conventional cinema; the narrative arc, film noir framing and composition, the long shot, the close-up, and the gaze, as examples. grey to white integrates these traditionally distinct approaches to the moving image. It is a synthesis of these “opposites” in the service of an anti-narrative–a composition not meant to be expository, but instead experiential.
Successfully integrating cinematic form and abstraction permits a nuanced experience and resists the less complex response of mere sympathy or cognitive empathy. As a wall-sized video projection, grey to white immerses the viewer in the fear, angst, anger, eroticism, and loss that are central to this work.
grey to white has been shown at the 2009 Maryland Insititute College of Art graduate thesis exhibition; Academy 2009, Conner Contemporary Art, curated by Leigh Conner and Jamie Smith, Washington DC; Convergence 09, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, Maryland; 12 Nights Festival, Harold Golen Gallery, Miami Florida; Darklight Festival, Dublin, Ireland (2009).
The Studio Floor 