PHIL SOLOMON

— Being an artist who has spent a great deal of his adult life exploring the haptic sense of the (treated and untreated) patinas of film texture and film grain, I have approached the squared off geometries of the digital domain with some degree of reluctance and aesthetic caution. In the past few months, however, I have been doing these ‘digital paintings’ in my spare time, with very little fuss (and no toxic fumes or messy cleanup) by employing, to some extent, orchestrated chance operations, a sort of digi-roulette wheel – and almost accidentally bumped into what I can begin to think of as a possible “pixel aesthetic” – something that perhaps Cézanne – or Francis Bacon – might have appreciated. I find the complexity of the color combinations and the inter-mangling of shapes to be something approaching the “organic” in feeling and texture. Doubt that these techniques would work as well for “moving pictures” for me at this point, and I do like that these images stay where they’re told.

As they say, every pixel tells a story.

OF GRAVE CONCERN 2

ECLIPSE

KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING

SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER

MISE EN SCENE

OF GRAVE CONCERN

SUNDAY DRIVE

THE DAY AFTER

THE LETTER

THE RELUCTANT VISION

THE SEEN

UNTITLED

UNYIELDING ANGUISH

WATCHING HER SLEEP

WATCHING THE DARK

WATERCOLOR

WITH THE X RAY EYES
—

Phil Solomon was born in 1954, in Manhattan, N.Y. Solomon has been making films since 1975 and is currently Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He was awarded a USA Artists Fellowship (2012), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1994) and has exhibited his films in every major venue for experimental film throughout the US and Europe; including as part of Whitney Biennial twice and three one-person shows at MoMA. His 3-channel installation, AMERICAN FALLS (2000-2012), was recently exhibited at the Museum of the Moving Image, NYC.