Mirror Road, 1976
Video (color); 8:00 min.
Black-and-white videotape recordings, video player, Dave Jones colorizer, and Javelin time-lapse videotape recorder
“Mirror Road is one of the few works I made at the Experimental Television Center [in Owego, New York], where I utilized the Dave Jones colorizer. I was looking to interweave two ideas: the movement of the landscape looking out a car window, particularly when turning and/or framing the rearview mirror as part of the picture plane, and manipulating the quantized levels/colors of the image gradations—that is, as the image pulls apart directionally there’s a kind of tearing of the shades of gray (colorized to further articulate the contours). The original video recordings were slowed down on a special reel-to-reel time-lapse video tape recorder, an early technology that had a peculiar side effect of creating slight wave-like motions, as if the screen were imperceptibly wavering in the wind, thus furthering the sense of the image about to tear or give way.”
In Mirror Road, Hill uses the camera and image processing devices to explore the malleability of electronic colors and image density. Amorphous structures move across the monitor like drifting clouds, changing color and direction. From time to time structures of fantastic color landscapes move past one another in the lower and upper halves of the picture (the rearview mirror takes up the upper half of the frame), only to be recombined into an amorphous unity.
Quasha, George and Charles Stein. An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works and Writings. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2009, p. 585.
Produced at Earthscore Foundation; Experimental Television Center, Owego, New York; and Artists TV Lab, Woodstock, New York, in the fall of 1975. Edited at Artists TV Lab in the fall of 1976.
Group screening. Upstate Films, Rhinebeck, New York, May 1977.
Woodstock Video Expovision, Rhinebeck, New York, September 1977.
Solo exhibition. Center for Media Art, The American Center, Paris, France, December 13 – 15, 1983.
2e Semaine Internationale de Vidéo, Saint-Gervais Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, November 16 – 21, 1987.
Solo screening. Espace lyonnais d’art contemporain (ELAC), Lyon, France, July 26 and September 27, 1988.
Vidéoformes 89: Festival de la Création Vidéo, Clermont-Ferrand, France, April 20 – 29, 1989.
Solo exhibition. “OTHERWORDSANDIMAGES,” Video Galleriet, Huset, Denmark and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark, April 20 – May 13, 1990.
Solo exhibition. Center for Contemporary Images, Saint-Gervais Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, September 9, 10, 1998.
“Gary Hill: Video Works,” NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo, Japan, February 16 – March 31, 1999.
Solo exhibition. Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 17 – June 4, 2000 (May 24, 2000 screening).
Solo exhibition. Museo Caraffa, Córdoba, Argentina, July 7 – 30, 2000 (July 8, 2000 screening).
“Hill(scape),” Extra Microwave Media Art Festival (organized by Videotage), Hong Kong Space Museum Lecture Hall, Hong Kong, January 14 – 31, 2001 (January 21 screening).
“l’écriture vidéophage – les bandes vidéo de Gary Hill,” La Compagnie, Marseille, France, May 1 – 31, 2001 (May 1 and 3 screenings).
“Gary Hill: Selected Works 1976 – 2003,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, May 2 – August 24, 2003.
“Videographies – The Early Decades,” EMST (The National Museum of Contemporary Art), Athens, Greece, July 13 – December 31, 2005.
“Les Projections du LaM,” LaM – Lille Métropole musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France, October 21, 2010.
"The Experimental Television Center: A History, Etc...," Hunter College Art Galleries, New York, New York, September 25 — November 21, 2015.
"Gary Hill: Momentombs," Suwon Art Museum, Suwon, Korea, November 26, 2019 — March 6, 2020.
"Out of the Box," Schaulager, Basel, Switzerland, June 10 — November 19, 2023.
Oeuvres vidéo de Gary Hill en sa présence. Center for Media Art. Program notes. Paris: American Center, 1983, unpaginated.
2e Semaine Internationale de Vidéo. Geneva: Saint-Gervais Genève, 1987, p. 125.
Vidéoformes '89: Festival de la Création Vidéo. Program notes. Clermont-Ferrand, France: Festival de la Création Vidéo, 1989, p. 12.
Sarrazin, Stephen. Chimaera Monographe No. 10 (Gary Hill). Montbéliard, France: Centre International de Création Vidéo Montbéliard, Belfort, 1992, pp. 20, 21.
Gary Hill: Video Works. Tokyo: NTT InterCommunication Center, 1999, pp. 15 – 17.
Morgan, Robert C., ed. Gary Hill. Baltimore: PAJ Books / The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, pp. 64 – 65.
Gary Hill en Argentina: textos, ensayos, dialogos. Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural Recoleta, 2000, p. 7, 8.
Gary Hill: Instalaciones. Córdoba: Ediciones Museo Caraffa, 2000, p. 72.
Hill (scape): Gary Hill’s video screening, performance and installation exhibition. Program notes.Hong Kong: Videotage, 2001, p. 8.
Gary Hill: Selected Works and catalogue raisonné. Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2002, pp. 64, 66, 78.
Unfolding Vision: Gary Hill, Selected Works 1976 – 2003. Taipei: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003, pp. 14, 78 – 79.
Quasha, George and Charles Stein. An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works and Writings. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2009, pp. 24, 25.