Gary Hill. Strange Trajectories

Gary Hill. Frustrum, 2006, Projektion
Courtesy: imai, Düsseldorf

The exhibition shows five large-format installations and an extensive video program. The core of the exhibition includes the new Gary Hill productions "Frustrum" and "Guilt". Both  installations are co productions with the imai foundation – inter media art institute, Duesseldorf, and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris and are now for the first time available for viewing in Germany. In spite of his particular importance to contemporary art, up to now there has only been a single solo Gary Hill exhibition in Germany.

Gary Hill will re install the installations "In Situ" (1986/2007) and "Glass Onion" (1983/2007) for the exhibition and set them up with a modern reference. The exhibition program is complemented with a selection of videos by the artist. 

Since Hill began to work with video 30 years ago, his main focus has remained the examination of the processes of perception and consciousness. The background for this is the dominance of the technical image in our culture which Gary Hill contrasts with the effect of speech as a significant system.

This process includes questions relating to presence, identity and the direct preoccupation with one's own body and its image. The medium of video thus becomes a poetic instrument of artistic cognition and self-awareness.

The two installations "Frustrum" and "Guilt" created in co operation with the Fondation Cartier are programmed challenges to the production and presentation conditions of arts and represent a performative experiment which questions the conditions for the creation of art and its reception.

For the "Frustrum" installation the artist had a 12.5 kg gold bar made and placed this in the middle of a 63 m² large basin filled with 2,000 litres of pure mineral oil. A video production is reflected on the black surface of the oil. The coining of the gold bar "FOR EVERYTHING WHICH IS VISIBLE IS A COPY OF THAT WHICH IS HIDDEN" refers to the ambiguity of the used objects and images. The striking "values" shown by Frustrum are not merely symbolic, but also real – with all the difficult implications they have for the production and exhibition of the work.

Hill uses his new productions and re-installations to ostensibly comment on political power systems while at the same time questioning the process of art production itself and the current development of art as capital and use as a status symbol of power without regard to the aesthetic.

Exhibition with five large-format installations and a video program: "Frustrum" (2006), "Guilt" (2006), "In Situ" (1986/2007), "Glass Onion" (1983/2007), "Crux" (1983-87) and other works.

Frustrum was co-produced by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris and by imai, Düsseldorf, and presented for the first time during the exhibition organised at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain from October 27, 2006 to February 2, 2007.)