Bill Morrison: Cycles & Loops

January 28 - March 12,2022

From the UT Visual Arts Center: "Bill Morrison is one of the most accomplished filmmakers working today whose practice rescues lesser known and forgotten histories while investigating the fragile existence of celluloid materials. His extensive filmography sources rare archival footage as well as 35mm nitrate film in various states of decomposition. Morrison’s work lies between the documentary nature of found footage and the chaotic intervention of nitrate film, with its inclination for entropy. Inhabiting the space between project and destiny, Morrison’s films can be described as a profession of faith in the perseverance of that which seems most doomed to perish. In Cycles & Loops, his first solo exhibition in Texas, Morrison deconstructs his films to create essential abstractions for the gallery space. The repetitive loops presented in the gallery do not have a beginning or end; instead, they allow the viewer to engage intellectually and emotionally with wavering and untethered relics from history. Together, these ephemeral fragments ask us a deeply existential question: how do we preserve what cannot be preserved? In Cycles & Loops, Morrison offers a response and demonstrates the possibilities for rebirth out of the chaos of decay. Bill Morrison: Cycles & Loops is organized by Donato Loia, 2020–21 Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts Center. Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. This exhibition and its programming are generously funded by a number of departments and centers at The University of Texas at Austin, including Dr. Richard Shiff, Center for the Study of Modernism; Dr. Susan Rather, Meredith and Cornelia Long Chair in Art and Art History; the College of Fine Arts and the Fine Arts Diversity Council's Student Project Grant; Humanities Institute support through the Viola S. Hoffman and George W. Hoffman Lectureship in Liberal and Fine Arts; the Department of Anthropology and the Bureau for Experimental Ethnography; the Department of Psychology; the Department of Radio–Television–Film; the Department of American Studies; the Department of Religious Studies; and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Additional support comes from 84 individual donors who contributed to a HornRaiser campaign in Summer 2021."

On View: January 28, 2022 | 12-5 pm

UT Visual Arts Center (VAC) 23rd and Trinity Streets
Austin, TX 78712
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