Gary Hill

Continuing with a thread of works that comingle language, memory and vision between extremities of light and darkness (Midnight Crossing, 1997 and The Storyteller’s Room, 1998, The Slow Torque of Bonsai, 2017), Afterwards will utilize considerably more found objects—debris, surplus, cast out furnishings, tools etc. that are consciously setup to generate overlapping vague narratives produced similarly to the previous works by using singular pulses of extreme light (harnessing the instant on capability of strobe lights) coinciding with speech acting as a trigger.

Once seated, a dim light fades and the space becomes pitch black. After several seconds a faint image begins to appear but is not discernable for several more seconds. Just about the time a viewer can grasp an image a voice speaks a singular word or phrase and at exactly the same time a momentary burst of blinding light obliterates the image and produces an afterimage of the objects/architecture that moves and at times multiplies with the blinks of the viewers’ eyes. It too fades in a matter of seconds putting the viewer back into pitch black space and/or with the hint of other images encroaching on the space. The process continues—images emerge, are slowly recognizable (or not quite) and the voice/light “resets” the space at varying intervals. The maximal experience involves a process of slow accumulation of narrative strands—viewers are made acutely aware of the neurological and physiological processes taking place over time.