DAVID HAXTON

  • David Haxton (b. 1943, USA) is a filmmaker and photographer. Active in the New York City experimental scene in the 1970s and 80s, he exhibited in all of the major spaces : The Anthology Film Archives (1976), the Museum of Modern Art’s renowned Cineprobe series (1978), the Whitney (1975, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1983, 2015).

     

  • “I became interested in making photographs because of my interest in the medium of film. 

    - David Haxton
  • In the 1970's Haxton's photography and films were exhibited in New York and Paris with Sonnabend gallery, the gallery renowned for bringing American conceptual and minimal art to Europe and European conceptual art and Arte Povera to New York.

  • "I became interested in examining the nature of the medium including light, movement, and the formation of a three- dimensional illusion on a flat surface."

    - David Haxton, MoMA Cineprobe presentation, 1978

  • Haxton's most canonical films were a series of  16mm films shot in the negative on a Bolex camera. The films explore flatness, dimensionality, and optical illusion.

     

  • 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.”

  • Each film is shot from a static camera angle, and lasts as long as it takes for the performer to complete the prescribed task. Action takes place as movement back and forth across the picture plane. Because black and white are reversed in the negative, light appears as black spots, and the usual spatial references are rendered oblique.

  • Moving Picture Screens (1974)

    Moving Picture Screens (1974) is a film installation in which the physical screen which shows the projection mirrors the screens in the film. 

  • Untitled, Diptychs (1976)

    Two 8 x 10 in. black and white contact prints made from 8 x 10 in. negatives.

    At the time that Haxton was creating the films, he also began making photographs. The gallery is pleased to reveal a series of never exhibited, unique vintage diptychs from 1976. Each work was made with 8 x 10 in negatives, and has a startling depth, and precision. While the works are enriched by their context - they were made on the film sets of the artist's canonical experimental films using the remnants of his performances: light bulbs, the torn and cut paper and more  - as individual works they are striking, potent, and intriguing.

  • David Haxton, No. 17, Untitled, Diptych, 1976 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    David Haxton, No. 9, Untitled, Diptych, 1976 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    David Haxton, No. 10, Untitled, Diptych, 1976 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    David Haxton, No. 16, Untitled, Diptych, 1976 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    David Haxton, No. 17, Untitled, Diptych, 1976

  • 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.

  • 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).

  • DAVID HAXTON

    DAVID HAXTON