Optical Space

Floor Three, Susan and John Hess Family Gallery and Theater

Abstract film emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as artists sought to escape the constraints of the visible and create non-representational forms in painting, sculpture, and the moving image. This program brings together works by the Abstract Film movement working in Berlin in the 1920s, whose abstract forms, made using cardboard, dyes, paint on glass, and paper, were animated into optical metaphors of the rhythm, meter and tone of music. The second group of works presents abstract experiments with the screen by artists who emerged in the latter half of the century, in works that shift our vision outwards from the screen into the space of the cinema and the outside world.

Hans Richter (1888–1976), Rhythmus 21, c. 1921
Werner Graeff (1901–1978), Komposition I, 1922
Walter Ruttman (1887–1941), Lichtspiel: Opus 1, 1921
Oskar Fischinger (1900–1967), Spirals, 1926
Robert Breer (1926–2011), 70, 1970
Ernie Gehr (b. 1941), Shift, 1974
Morgan Fisher (b. 1942), Projection Instructions, 1976
Luis Recoder (b. 1971), Linea, 2002

Tickets are required ($12 adults, students, and seniors; free for members). Doors open thirty minutes before the program begins. Ticket holders are guaranteed admission until the start of the program, at which time any unclaimed seats will be released.