Film & Video (Film & Video)

Commissioned for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, Hearsay of the Soul (2012) is Werner Herzog’s ode to the landscape paintings of the 17th-century Dutch artist Hercules Segers. The work is a four-channel digital projection of Segers’s artworks accompanied by the emotive music of the Dutch cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger. Herzog sees Segers’s vast landscapes as powerful representations of our own interior worlds, resounding with feelings of anger, joy, fear, and loneliness.

War Footage is a series of wall-mounted works composed of 16mm film leader, tightly bound to flag-shaped panels by the artist. In their monochrome simplicity — some white, some black, one red — they bring to mind Rauschenberg’s minimalist paintings from the 50’s; the shape and repetitive figuration bring to mind Jasper John’s later flag paintings. Modifications to the blank leader – holes, letters, random dots and dashes – were created by the machinations of previous Ancalmo pieces.