Event
PAT O’NEILL / MATRIX 262Post an Event »
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
September 28 - November 27, 2016Info
- http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
- (510) 642-0808
Pat O’Neill: still from Runs Good, 1970; three-channel continuous video projection, transferred from 16mm film; color, sound; BAMPFA, museum purchase: Phoebe Apperson Hearst, by exchange. Image courtesy of the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.
MATRIX 262 features a wide selection of the films O’Neill has made since the 1960s, which will be shown on BAMPFA’s multiple screens—the Barbro Osher Theater, Theater Two, and the outdoor screen—at various times throughout the run of the exhibition. Examples of O'Neill's sculpture, photography, and works on paper will be on view in the galleries alongside Runs Good (1970/2012), which will be shown continuously as a three-channel projection. During the making of this film, O’Neill visited BAMPFA, where he encountered the color field canvases by Hans Hofmann. The Abstract Expressionist painter’s approach to color made a deep impression: O’Neill noted, “I was thinking about the idea of optical recession and advance, how colors occupy space depending on hue, saturation, and contrast with the field.” MATRIX 262 runs concurrent with the exhibition Push and Pull: Hans Hofmann, enabling visitors to see O’Neill’s work alongside the paintings that inform it. Los Angeles-based artist Pat O’Neill (b. 1939), a pioneer of avant-garde film and optical printing techniques, creates densely layered films and moving-image environments that explore the hybrid and expanded terrain of film, photography, and sculpture. A founding faculty member at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1970, O’Neill has been a key figure in West Coast experimental cinema for the past fifty years. His innovative use of the optical printer, which enables filmed images to be manipulated and altered directly on celluloid, marked a creative breakthrough in composite image-making in film.