Opening reception Saturday at Gallery at Still River Editions

The Gallery at Still River Editions
128 East Liberty St., Danbury, (203) 791-1474
Gene Gort: Intellectual Property
Through June 29, 2012.
Opening Reception: Sat., Apr. 21, 4—6 p.m.

Press release

The exhibition Intellectual Property at the Gallery at Still River Editions features archival digital print editions of new work by multi-disciplinary artist Gene Gort. His new series reveals a hidden beauty that emerges from his interaction with the technology meant to keep people from illegally copying movies. Some of the prints have elements that look familiar, while others are pure geometric abstracts.

Gort says of the project in his artist's statement:

Intellectual Property focuses on the visual noise generated from attempting to extract video from copyright encrypted commercial DVD's. As an educator who uses video clips as a mainstay of my classroom practice, I am always showing samples from various sources.

Recently, while attempting to extract sequences from mainstream movies, I was struck by the endless variation of intentional visual noise this process generates in order to keep me and everyone else from illegally copying movies. Through various encoding and decoding software, I found that the variability and randomness of the encryption algorithms produced remarkably unpredictable distortions and abstractions of the images. So much so that it was nearly impossible to get the same results twice.

The images in this series are screen-grabs from this process; a kind of performance that I do responding to the real-time events I am watching on screen. The titles are an ironic pairing of 'intellectual property' and the film title, like 'Stolen', 'Catch Me If You Can', 'Precious', 'Babel' or 'Gone with the Wind'. The work has nothing to do with plot or characters depicted in the movies nor do they mimic any of the imagery or scenes.

Gene Gort is a visual artist whose artistic practice is concerned with making the ordinary significant. He is keenly aware of the role of whatever medium he uses in this process be it video production, installation, digital printmaking or multi-media performance.


The exhibition will be on display through June 29. There will be an artist's reception on Sat., Apr. 21, from 4—6 p.m.