DAVID HAXTON b. 1943

David Haxton is a filmmaker and photographer. In his early films, which are primarily shot in negative with a static camera angle, the artist directs sparse, minimalist actions that play with the flatness of the screen and the dimensionality of the studio space.

The artist directs simple tasks such as rearranging lights in a studio, cutting strips of paper, or outlining what appear to be drawn spheres in space which are rendered as graphic explorations of optical illusions. 

Jonas Mekas, the influential filmmaker and theorist, described Haxton’s works in the Village Voice in 1975 as “The most inventive exploration of negative-positive possibilities and illusions that I’ve seen in film.”

In the 1970s and 80s Haxton exhibited in all of the major spaces for experimental film: The Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Modern Art’s Cineprobe series, the Whitney Biennial, and his photography and films were exhibited in New York and Paris with Sonnabend gallery.

Select recent group exhibitions include at Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2022), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019),  KANAL – Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2018), Pirelli Hangarbicocca, Milan, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015). Haxton’s work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, SFMOMA, San Francisco, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Albright Knox Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Australia, MoMA, New York, Kadist Foundation, Polaroid Collection, and the Chicago Art Institute.