Saturday January 18, 7pm
PURGATORY
New and Recent Films & Videos by Josh Lewis
admission $6 – artist in person
Still from “Double Happiness” (Josh Lewis, 2010/2013) © courtesy of the artist
Microscope is very pleased to present a screening night of Super8, 16mm and video by Josh Lewis. We have been anticipating this evening since we were formally introduced to the Brooklyn-based artist when he screened his film “Extinction Becomes Us: Kodachrome vs. SantaCon“ during the 2011 “Bring Your Own Kodachrome” night organized by Pip Chodorov and Stephanie Gray at the gallery. With works ranging from abstraction to documentary and narrative filmmaking, Josh Lewis reflects an interest in the mechanisms of human need and desire. Through an approach that includes humor, satire and empathy, his films seek to explore the strategies in which we attempt (and fail) to transform ourselves.
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Josh Lewis is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker working primarily with 16mm film—a craft picked up while working as a film lab technician in New York City. In addition to his own work, he is an active member of Mono No Aware, through which he operates an artist-run film lab focused on alternative and experimental photographic processes. His work has screened internationally and at various festivals and venues including Eyebeam, Uniondocs, Sight Unseen, Magic Lantern Cinema, Millennium Film Workshop, Cinecycle, Aurora Picture Show, and Yale University. He is originally from the suburbs of New Jersey and is a member of the DecayNY collective.
PROGRAM
(55 minutes)
Doubt: Nos. 2-6
16mm, 2min 40 sec each, chemical toned B/W film, silent, 2013
Doubt is an ongoing series that attempts to penetrate film’s enigmatic materiality in tandem with the vagaries of my own emotional and psychological states. Each installment consists of a single 100′ roll of 16mm black and white film stock exposed with simple vertical lines that follow the natural trajectory of the film strip. Working under red light, the emulsion is then treated by hand with various chemical applications, giving the strip it its color, texture, and sense of movement. Although an idea of progress from roll to roll is not necessarily an objective, I do have sense that working and struggling with the material in this way will symbiotically further my understanding of what film is made of, and what I am made of.
Win the Lottery by Controlling your Mind
Video, 3 min 20 sec, 2011
Engineered to facilitate your winning the lottery through self-induced subliminal manipulation. Although it is one of many self-hypnosis lottery video aides, I believe it to be the best and most effective. You are more than you.
Pillager
16mm, 4 min 30 sec, black and white, sound, 2011
A 16mm chemical action painting made towards the end of my tenure as a grunt worker in a film processing lab. At the time when I was spending most of my days slacking off down in the lab’s sub basement playing with raw film stock and reversal chemicals.
Dalia Dippolito Calls husband from Jail!
Video, 11 min 23 sec, 2011
Set against the desperate trappings of Florida luxury, a woman calls her husband from prison after trying to have him murdered.
Extinction Becomes Us: Kodachrome vs. SantaCon
Super 8, 3min, color, silent, 2010
Born from a chance encounter with the post-irony age holiday bacchanalia known as SantaCon. Shot in December 2010 in New York’s Central Park with my last ever roll of Super-8 Kodachrome. A brief moment of overlap between two eras apparently at odds.
Double Happiness: Excerpts #1-5
Super 16mm transferred to video, approx 3 min each, B&W, sound, 2010/2013
An ill-fated narrative project based on a line-by-line transcript of an episode of Beverly Hills 90210. The film was never completed; it exists now in 5 non-linear excerpts, doomed, and floating gently in self-reflexive obscurity.
ANTIMATICAY
16mm, B&W and Color, 8 min, sound, 2014
Part elegy, part pathological nonsense verse, emerging from two people ending a relationship over text message.
Still from “Doubt #2” (Josh Lewis, 2013) © courtesy of the artist
