Vincent Grenier
Archived Festival Selections, Gallery Exhibitions and Permanent Collections
Festival Selections & Curated Screenings:
2022
Moonrise,While Revolved, 1976-2022, restored with sound by Etienne Grenier
2020-2021
CatchThese videos by Vincent Grenier will be exhibited between December 15-19 2020, at the Galleria Cortabitarte, in Soria, as part of the XXII Certamen Internacional de Corto de Soria, SOIF, a film festival. The gallery series, El Videoarte en Nueva York, will include a series of video shows by 8 individual artists.
Wishbone
2019-2020
2018-2019
CommuteIntersection
Interieur Interiors, World in Focus, & Tabula Rasa
Solo Shows:
Cineinfinito #63 Vincent Grenier (I) Catch 4:15 | Light Shaft 6:20 | Toile 8:46 | While Revolved 9 | X 8 | World in Focus 16m.
Cineinfinito #64 Vincent Grenier (II) Interieur Interiors 15 | Mend 6 | Closer Outside 9:30 | Tremors 13:20 | Time’s Wake 12 | Surface Tension #2 4m.
Catch
Shade
[Fotogramma]
Una consapevolezza umoristica e poetica del presente
Here
Les
chaises
Armoire
(4 parts)
Closer
Outside
[Piega]
Eteronomia monocroma. In luogo di Tremors, Surface Tension
#2, Color Study
[Fotogramma]
Il colore come puro fenomeno
World
in Focus
Intersection
This is in addition to 4 blogs published by
L’EMERGERE DEL POSSIBILE in the Spring 2016 (See
2015-2016) on Time’s
Wake, Watercolor,
Burning
Bush, Interieur
Interiors, Back View and Intersection
.
2017-2018
Burning Bush
Les Chaises
2016-2017
WatercolorNOFEST 2017 Announcement in English: The Image is Missing
Light Shaft
Intersection
Pending
Tabula Rasa
Friday 26 May 00.15 - 01.15, Open Air Cinema VOX, Themistokleous 82, Exarcheia, Athens, Greece
A selection of short films by James Edmonds ??? Petra Graf : Joseph Bernard, James Edmonds, Elise Florenty & Marcel Türkowsky, Vincent Grenier, Daniel Kupferberg, Margaret Rorison, Lara Schroder.
2nd June, 2017, Hotel Maria Kapel (HMK), Hoorn, The Netherlands
curated with Alanna Lawely and James Edmonds.
Solo Shows:
Vincent Grenier | Inderterminate Space. Two screenings at the Cinématheque Québecoise, Wednesday May 3 and Thursday May 4th at 9 pm. Event is organized by VISIONS in collaboration with the Cinématheque Québecoise and Lumiere. : “Entre Montréal & New York - 16mm films” (Tuesday) "Avant Docs” (Wednesday)
Book chapter from Philosophy of Documentary Films. (628 pages)
Habitats of Documentary - Landscapes, Color Fields and Ecologies in the Avant-Docs of Vincent Grenier by Patricia Zimmermann and Claudia Pedersen. Philosophy of Documentary Films, edited by David LaRocca, Lexington Books / Rowmann & Littlefield, www.rowman.com Launched December 2016. The book includes texts by Cavell, Carroll, Currie, Plantinga, Perkins, Sobchack, Gunning, Altman, Ruoff, Rothman, Fried, Herzog, Nichols, Mieke Bal, Scott MacDonald, and Linda Williams, among others.
The essay (25 pages) examines the following works by
Vincent Grenier: Color Study, Watercolor, Armoire and Les
Chaises, to explore how these works stage a
political and philosophical intervention into the
history of documentary: through their careful
considerations of movement and framing, they reject the
figuring of landscape as timeless, unchanging, excess.
Chapter concludes with:
These avant-docs of Vincent Grenier probe the
relationships between nature and the built environment.
They mobilize a series of philosophical paradoxes that
fold and unfold into each other: cinema and painting,
surface and depth, light and dark, the screen and the
frame, the material and the immaterial, the represented
and the simulation, nature and technology, horizontal
and vertical planes, three-dimensional lived reality and
two-dimensional screens, landscapes and technologies,
large philosophical enquiries and small places, tableau
shots and subject movement, analog and digital. These
works also offer analytical dialogues that examines how
cinema engages and layers art historical trajectories in
landscape, color fields, and environmental art.
Grenier’s videos introduce a critical
practice toward landscape, a strategy of alienation to
provoke reflection about our relationship with
meditation and the natural world. These videos stage a
distancing effect to call attention to cultural
fascinations with simulations of nature. The Grenier
videos discussed invoke the older traditions of art as
imitating nature, a consistent visual trope across all
the works discussed in this essay. They then launch
elaborately choreographed rejections of this tradition,
by making it clear that what one is looking at is a
simulation - an image many times displaced - of
“natural environments.” This move resonates
with postmodernist art focused on exposing process.
These works ask what happens when documentary moves
beyond the subject and the documentary triangle into the
avant-doc octagon, composed of vectors of light, place,
movement, framing, landscape, technology, and
simulation.
2015-2016
World in Focus:Watercolor:
Intersection:
http://lightcone.org/fr/news-403-le-cinema-comme-objet-trouve-le-cinema-de-vincent-grenier
On Vincent Grenier’s video INTERSECTION.
Cars were just part of the traffic in the
hillside,
A brook of the buzz there.
Caught like decals on the meadow
But not sticking anywhere, the only pollen
On them photonic, budding in eyes,
Coursing through chiasma to be switched out
Across the banks of sight (feathery with morning,
Stark speckled at dusk). Do they intrude? Their
Speed makes them spectral, only part of slope memory,
Until the rigs turn through––all
chrome & red today––
Long mirrors of the lanes, converting to rust
This field they pass, till sleep's dark rise
Lifts them to longer
Trees on the ridge,
Nests in acacia, clouds of pine.
-- Walter K. Lew
ARTFORUM online:
New York Film Festival: Projections by Tony Pipolo.
9.30.2015.
http://artforum.com/film/id=55207
As always, there are familiar names as well as
new ones; and as to be expected, the works vary not
only in focus and style but in merit as well. Against
those digital pieces enamored of postmodern
pretensions, there are plenty of artists for whom the
digital is not a route to facile thinking but an
opportunity for exciting new ways to create.
Among the latter is Lewis Klahr, whose unfailing
instinct for generating action in the fleeting
intervals between and superimpositions of still images
is apparent in Mars Garden, an episode from his
series exploring links between Greek myths and
comic-book superheroes. Equally unmistakable
is Vincent Grenier’s uncanny sense of
camera placement and the enigmatic relation of
foreground to background this produces—evident
in this
year’s Intersection—and Janie
Geiser’s gift for cutting between private,
encoded images to create dense montages that defy
ready interpretation, as vibrant as ever
in Cathode Garden. These elegantly conceived,
shot, and constructed gems bear the indelible signs of
irreplaceable moving-picture artists.
MUBI Notebook:
NYFF 2015, Projections: Flipping Through Channels,
Michael Sicinski, Oct 2, 2015, https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/nyff-projections-highlights
My top Ten Projections Films: These are the top
ten films I saw originally at the NYFF Projections
Festival:
8. Intersection (Vincent Grenier, U.S. / Canada)
“Grenier's work is consistently characterized by
small-scale landscape study, usually taken as an
opportunity for an examination of the pleasures and
vicissitudes of color and light. Unlike so many other
artists working in this formalist vein, Grenier almost
always finds room in his work for wry, subtle humor,
which makes him kind of a treasure, especially in the
often grim, strait-laced world of the avant-garde. His
latest, Intersection, has a built-in pun: it is in
fact shot at an intersection, where a spur street
meets a state highway in Ithaca, NY. Grenier trains
his camera on a patch of wildflowers up on a hill
overlooking the intersection. But this means that the
cars and trucks moving in and out of the streets
consistently penetrate the image field. Grenier uses
complex digital editing to push and pull the vehicles
into the image, smearing them or taking them apart. So
the result is a baseline painterly image in the
Impressionist vernacular, constantly interrupted,
blended, and yes, intersected by hard enamel, color
field, AbEx, and Pop coloration. Confounding? Well,
yes. But mom always told you to stay out of the
street.
Projections Program 2. Reviewed by Connor Newton
Posted May 21, 2016 - FilmMattersMagazine.com
Grenier’s Intersection works as a
juxtaposition between the natural and the mechanical.
Grenier places his camera at an intersection near
Ithaca, NY, to capture the daily dance among nature,
car, and road. Intersection jostles between shots of a
flower-filled corner of a road and shots of cars zooming
by, blurring the screen and eclipsing the foliage.
Grenier replaces the colors of the flowers with that of
the speeding cars, their paint streaking across the
frame like an impressionistic brushstroke. Grenier
perfectly selects his stills to capture the images of
vehicles in their most distorted and stretched forms,
frozen masses of kinetic energy. Additionally, while
most films lacked a score, Grenier utilizes the sounds
of cars passing, which, matched with the constant
movement between his frames, grants an illusion of
movement. Intersection presents our daily act of
transportation as a disruption of one idea of beauty, of
our ability to perceive our natural environment; but
Grenier also generates a different aesthetic with the
disrupting cars: Grenier’s palette consists of the
colorful burst of the cars onto the screen.
BLOG ENTRIES (In Italian) from:
L
’Emergence Del Possible: (The Rise of the
Possible) Ogni film ci mostra il cinema e ne è la
morte.
PIEGHE
#26: L’ESISTENZA DEL LUOGO DEL CINEMA,
L’ESPERIENZA DAL LUOGO DEL CINEMA
by Francesco Cazzin, 3 Giurno 2016. More on Time’s
Wake, Interieur Interiors and Burning Bush, also on Back
View, Intersection.
Francesco Cazzin later explains: In this one,
(Pieghe: #26) I finish the conversation that I started
in the earlier post about Time's Wake (once removed): in
fact, it seems to me that in Time's Wake and in
Intérieurs interiors (To A.K.) you create an
image as a place, a particular and specific place as
well as reality, so it isn't thinkable - as I think you
show (these understandings) progressing in an
anti-kantian way, in a way that I think is closer with
Husserl phenomenology - with the reality categories. In
Time’s Wake, the image is temporally determined;
in Intérieurs, it is spatially determined. As I
told you, I really love your cinema because it really
re-thinks the ontological dimension of cinema, so I hope
I was able, in this article, to explain how - IMHO -
this new cinematographic ontology emerges.
Unfortunately, it was quite-complex writing this piece,
and it requires a lot of time. My english is quite-bad,
I can read it and speak it, but it is difficult for me
to translate my articles. Hope you'll be able to catch
the sense anyways.
WATERCOLOR
(Fall Creek) by Francesco Cazzin, 13 Maggio 2016 (in
Italian)
SIMULACRA #22: Time’s Wake (Once Removed) by Francesco Cazzin, 6 Maggio 2016
FOTOGRAMMI
#53: Burning Bush by Francesco Cazzin, 22 Maggio 2016
2014-2015
Watercolor:
.........National Gallery of Art, West Building LH, Washington, DC, Pgrm 1, Sat July 19th 2014.
.........Gallery installation: Watercolor & Burning Bush were screened continuously from Fri. Nov 7th to Sun. Nov 9th with two other works at the Smithy Center for the Arts, 55 Pioneer St, Cooperstown, NY.
Solo Shows: (with Q&A )
Reviews:
It's
the Small Things (Click on Archive tab and
11.2014) by Tony Pipolo on the Cinema as a Found Object,
Films and Videos by Vincent Grenier program at Anthology
Film Archives, ARTFORUM, 11.7.14
An
interview with Vincent Grenier in advance of his
November 30 screening at Counterpath, Denver,
Colorado.
Naturally
Unnaturally, Review and Interview in Westword
by Kyle Harris, Denver, Colorado
20th Media City Festival, 2014, Excerpt
from Canadian Program (English Translation) by
Emilie Vergé for
LUMIERE, Online Journal of Cinema Critique, Spain.
On "Watercolor" (voir
original en Francais)
Entrevue
avec Vincent Grenier au sujet de Watercolor
(Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Montréal)
En francais sur You Tube. 11.10.2014
E-Mail: In Watercolor Vincent Grenier
reveals something we all know, but continually forget:
the world is always making movies. Flows of
reflection, contingencies of light, movement within
frames surround us. But it takes a filmmaker of vision
and an ability to linger to reminds us of this
essential fact of our visual world. Color flows, light
glints and patterns of amazement superimpose
themselves in layers of viscous sight. A wonder to
behold
.-- Tom Gunning
2013-2014:
Watercolor:......... Rhode Island School of Design, RISD Auditorium, Providence, RI, Feb 24th
......... Berks Filmmakers at Albright College,Berks PA, Feb 25th
......... University of Colorado/ Naropa University, First Person Cinema Series, Boulder, March 3rd
..........Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the Arts, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, April 2
..........New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Cullman Center, Sat May 3, 2014
Waiting Room:
Solo Shows:
6406 N I H 35 # 3100, Austin, TX. Sponsored by Experimental Response Cinema & Austin Film Society
Cine-List, a weekly guide to alternative
cinema. Sept 6 -Sept 12. Crucial Viewing: Onion City
Experimental Film & Video Festival Columbia College
Chicago (1104 S. Wabash Ave., 5th Floor) & Music Box
Theatre- Friday through Sunday.
...Wandering, Pausing (Saturday, 1pm at Columbia
College) is probably the loveliest program of the
festival. Lush, intense colors and imagery intermingle
with rigorous compositions and challenging
abstractions. Like so much of Vincent Grenier’s
work, WATERCOLOR (FALL CREEK) is so damned simple and
straightforward that it's maddening how perfect and
breathtaking the whole thing ends up being. WATERCOLOR
is simply that - the color of water shot from under a
bridge. The colors are never simply blue, never simply
clear, always flowing (you know, like water) and
always bifurcated by the shadow of the bridge. As the
video progresses, the compositions start to mimic
color field paintings then - with little time left -
abruptly shift perspective, first visually, then
temporally. Shit, it's good.
-- JBM
2012-2013:
Tabula Rasa:
Color Study:
Solo Shows:
1976–2011, Vincent Grenier, USA, Various Formats, ca. 75 minutes + discussion
Films and videos from across his career, including 16mm films like While Revolved (1976), which immerses the viewer in a subtly shifting sea of color, to videos like Les Chaises (2008), a patient backyard portrait of two red chairs textured by light. From color studies to lyrical explorations of associative montage, Grenier’s work inspires the viewer to watch and wait, newly attentive to the quiet surprises of daily life.
Interviews:
2011-2012:
Tabula Rasa:
Color Study:
Oct 19, & Oct 20 (In attendance to introduce Armoire)
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley 4-21-12, & Film Society Cinema, San Francisco, 4-23-12. Back View:
Black Maria tour includes screenings at Berks Filmmakers, Albright College, Reading PA, Feb 28, Hartford University Art school; University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Princeton University.
Burning Bush:
Canadian films from CFMDC (1967-1979) Pgrm. curated by Oona Mosna & Jeremy Rigsby. A selection of films including works by Michael Snow, David Rimers and others. Surface Tension:
Solo Show:
2010-2011:
Light Shaft:Les Chaises:
Two programs. Ross Media Arts Center, University of Nebraska Tabula Rasa :
Solo Shows:
2009-2010:
Straight Lines:
Coda:
Armoire (Prologue) an installation:
Burning Bush:
Solo Shows: