The University Record, September 11, 2000

Photo stories: Exhibitions focus on ‘VideoCulture’

As part of ‘VideoCulture: Three Decades of Video Art,’ the Museum of Art and Media Union are sponsoring a residency by New York-based video artist Chris Doyle. Trained as an architect at Harvard University, Doyle has emerged as a talent in video art, know for projects that focus on the objects of ordinary life, and his ability to transform our perceptions of them. He will present two new video art works while on campus:

  • ‘What I See When I Look at You,’ 9–11 p.m. tonight, outside north wall of the Museum of Art, rain or shine. Doyle examines the changing nature of the portrait, combining images of historic portraits from the Museum’s collections with video portraits of people on campus.

  • ‘Some Natural History,’ noon-6 p.m. daily, through Oct. 4, Media Union Gallery, North Campus. Doyle’s gallery work focuses on giving added life to the inanimate. This installation uses manmade materials to recreate ‘nature’ on several scales, combining video footage of changing configurations of bricks, put into continuous motion by stop-action animating. An actual brick ‘landscape’ surrounds the video monitors and experiences mutation as student assistants slowly rearrange the bricks.

    The Jean Paul Slusser Gallery at the School of Art and Design is exhibiting a video installation of Dutch artist Aernout Mik through Oct. 22, shown here in preparation (photo of Slusser by Paul Jaronski, U-M Photo Services). Mik is known for combining architectural constructions and spatial interventions with live actors and/or silent video projects of people involved in a variety of motion and emotions. This solo exhibition is his first in the United States.

    The Slusser Gallery is open noon–8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

    The exhibitions are a contribution to a collaboration that joins the forces of 11 museums, galleries and arts education organizations in metropolitan Detroit to examine video art and its impact on contemporary culture. For more information on the collaboration, visit the Web at www.videoculture.org. To find out more about Doyle, visit the Web at www.umich.edu/~umma/chrisdoyle.