Gary Hill

In 1969 Gary Hill started to work with video, initially with Woodstock Community Video at Woodstock, N. Y. He then taught in a number of cities in New York State. In the academic year 1983-84 he lived in Japan, thanks to the award of a Japan-United States Cultural Exchange Fellowship. In 1988 he worked at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris as an Exchange Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received a great many prizes and awards, including the Leone d'Oro for the sculptural work he exhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1995 and the Artist Award for a Distinguished Body of Work bestowed by the College Art Association of America, New York (1996). Since 1985 Gary Hill has lived in Seattle.

Hill's first works in video were made in 1973-74 and treat ecological and environmental issues in the form of image-sound montages. In 1974 he also made his first installations, using these to give the same themes greater presence within the exhibition space and thus to impinge more effectively on the spectator’s attention. After meeting the poets George Quasha and Charles Stein in 1976, Hill became increasingly concerned with language and the interaction between image, sound and text. In the poetic spaces of his video-sound installations the notion of the human body is always poised between thinking and seeing, language and the act of speaking, virtual space and experience of reality. The camera, and with it the spectator's gaze, is drawn back and forth between a close, almost physical examination of surfaces and, at the other extreme, vastly distanced or elevated views. Much of Hill's work is characterized by a powerful suggestion of the merging of space and time.

Individual exhibitions (selection)
 
1971 Polaris Gallery, Woodstock
1979 The Kitchen Center for Music, Video and Dance, New York
1980 »Video Viewpoints«, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
1982 Galerie H beim ORF, steirischer herbst, Graz
1983 The American Center, Paris
1986 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1990 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
1992 Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, subsequently at IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Kunsthalle, Vienna
1993 »Gary Hill, In Light of the Other«, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, in collaboration with Tate Gallery, Liverpool
1994 »Gary Hill«, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, subsequently at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, Kansas; »Imagining the Brain Closer than the Eyes«, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basle
1995 Moderna Museet, Stockholm, subsequently at Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo, Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, Helsingfors Konsthall, Helsinki, Urnea, Jönköping, Göteborg
1996 »Gary Hill, Withershins«, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Galerie des Archives, Paris
1997 »sgg*Image«, Saint-Gervais, Geneva; »Midnight Crossing«, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Magneto, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro
 
Groupe exhibitions (selection)
 
1975 »Projects Video VI«, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
1979 »Beau Fleuve«, Media Study, Buffalo, subsequently at The Center for Media Art, American Center, Paris, L'Espace Lyonnais d'Action Culturelle, Lyon, Marseille
1982 The Biennale of Sydney, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
1983 Biennal Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1984 Biennale di Venezia, Venice
1987 documenta VIII, Kassel; »Infermental VI«, Western Front, Vancouver
1989 »Video-Skulptur retrospektiv und aktuell 1963-89«, Kunstverein, Cologne, subsequently at Kongresshalle Berlin, Kunsthaus Zürich
1990 »Passage de l'image«, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, subsequently at Fundacio »la Caixa«, Barcelona, Power Plant, Toronto, Wexner Art Center, Columbus, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
1991 »Metropolis«, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
1992 documenta IX, Kassel; »Doubletake«, Hayward Gallery, London
1994 São Paulo Bienal, São Paulo
1995 »MultiMediale 4«, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; 3. Biennale de Lyon, Lyon; »Identità e Alterità«, Biennale di Venezia, Venice
1996 »NowHere«, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; »fremdKörper - corps etranger - Foreign Body«, öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basle; »Being and Time: The Emergence of Video Projection«, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
1997 »Engel, Engel«, Kunsthalle, Vienna; »Die Epoche der Moderne«, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 

[Frauke Syamken, 1997]