Standing Apart/Facing Faces, 1996
Four-channel video installation
Two video projectors, two 20-inch color video monitors, two adjustable monitor wall mounts, four-channel synchronizer, four laserdisc players and four laserdiscs (color; silent)
Dimensions variable
Edition of one
Standing Apart and Facing Faces are two linked video works intended to be shown either together as a single installation (positioned at opposite corners of the same room) or as separate works. Standing Apart involves two separate, approximately life-size, color images of the same standing man projected onto two adjacent walls. Facing Faces involves two close-up video images, shown on two twenty-inch color monitors, of the same man, in a view of his head and shoulders. The two monitors are turned toward each other at an angle slightly greater than ninety degrees.
The video images for both works were recorded simultaneously with four cameras, so that the frontal view of the middle-aged Native American man is actually identical, except for varying focal lengths. In both works the effect is that one figure seems to gaze straight out at the viewer, while 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. This single change in the angle of the gaze happens once, followed by a return to the original position, and the cycle begins again.
An example of this work was first exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, New York, November 17 – December 21, 1996.
“Angel, Angel,” Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, June 11, 1997 – September 7, 1997; Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic, October 23, 1997 – January 11, 1998.
“Gary Hill: O lugar do outro/where the other takes place,” Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; July 3 – September 21, 1997; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil, October 3 – November 2, 1997.
Solo exhibition. Center for Contemporary Images, Saint-Gervais Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, September 5 – October 11, 1998.
“Photography, Film, Video: Reconstruction Reality. Diane Arbus, Stan Douglas, Gary Hill, Mike Kelley, and Andy Warhol,” PaceWildenstein, New York, New York, December 13, 2005 – January 21, 2006.
Morgan, Robert C. “Gary Hill / Barbara Gladstone Gallery,” Review 2, 7 (December 15, 1996), pp. 29, 30.
Pichler, Catherin, ed. Engel, Engel. Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien, 1997, pp. 132 – 141, 260, 261.
Dantas, Marcello. Gary Hill: O lugar do outro/where the other takes place. Rio de Janeiro: Magnetoscópio, 1997, pp. 6, 9, 68.
Quasha, George and Charles Stein. Tall Ships. Gary Hill’s Projective Installations 2. Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Arts, 1997.
Quasha, George and Charles Stein. Viewer. Gary Hill’s Projective Installations 3. Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Arts, 1997.
Liesbrock, Heinz. Gary Hill: Midnight Crossing. Münster: Westfälischer Kunstverein, 1997, pp. 11, 12.
“Liminal Performance: Gary Hill in Conversation with George Quasha and Charles Stein,” PAJ (Performing Arts Journal) No. 58, Vol. XX, No. 1 (January 1998), pp. 12, 22.
Morgan, Robert C., ed. Gary Hill. Baltimore: PAJ Books / The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, pp. 152, 153, 254, 264.
Gary Hill en Argentina: textos, ensayos, dialogos. Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural Recoleta, 2000, pp. 33, 39.
Gary Hill: Instalaciones. Córdoba: Ediciones Museo Caraffa, 2000, pp. 42, 51.
Lageira, Jacinto. Des premiers mots aux derniers silences in Gary Hill: Around & About: A Performative View. Paris: Éditions du Regard, 2001, pp. 15, 16, 22.
Quasha, George and Charles Stein. La performance elle-même in Gary Hill: Around & About: A Performative View. Paris: Éditions du Regard, 2001, pp. 15, 20, 25 – 26, 61, 73, 79, 92.
Mauron, Véronique. Le signe incarné: ombres et reflets dans l’art contemporain. Paris: Éditions Hazan, 2001, pp. 205, 208, 220 - 221, 266.
Odin, Paul-Emmanuel. “La syncope du regard.” Le Pavé 188 (February 27 – 13, 2002).
Gary Hill: Selected Works and catalogue raisonné. Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2002, pp. 202, 203, 204.
Gary Hill: Resounding Arches / Archi Risonanti. (Catalogue and DVD.) Rome: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali Soprintendenza archeologica di Roma, and Milan: Mondadori Electa S.p.A., 2005, pp. 148.
Kaye, Nick. Multi-Media: Video, Installation, Performance. London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 26, 131 – 139, 210.
Quasha, George and Charles Stein. An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works and Writings. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2009, pp. 486, 584.