Author Description

This comprehensive monograph illuminates Wilcox's work in collaged movie and television footage and handmade animation--mythical romantic mini-narratives--with essays from Johanna Burton and New Yorker critic Hilton Als. Wilcox shoots in Super 8, both original footage and preexisting film from a video monitor, transfers his work to video for editing, and then to 16 millimeter for presentation. When it is shown, the sound of the projector dominates the gallery space, while the silence of the film itself indexes the impossibility of hearing the silent voices. There is no illusion of transparency, of believing one might share any kind of simple present with the characters on the screen. Instead, the transfers between formats give the collected imagery a sort of patina, suggesting not only temporal distance--the weight of history--but also a shift in the equilibrium of the senses. As seen at The Museum of Modern Art and the 2004 Whitney Biennial in New York.