Some of the videos run for several hours, so each visitor will see a slightly different version of the presentation. We think of art as existing in three dimensions, but video art uses the dimension of time as an integral part of the medium, adding the welcome challenge of the complexity of a fourth dimension. The visual and temporal variables of the videos are further punctuated with the aural. Sounds as disparate as the soft breathing of sleep and the loud clanging of machinery are juxtaposed, arresting your mind like a meditation bell. The sounds make you notice the images flickering across the screens and monitors, images in slow motion, trapped in boxes or projected larger than life.
Ordinary images seem more profound, and, of course, some of the images themselves are extraordinary.
In a work from 1992, Heaven and Earth , two black and white video tubes face each other, mounted at the ends of wooden columns. On the upper monitor is a video of the artist's mother on her deathbed. On the lower monitor is a video of his infant son, only a few days old. The videos reflect into each other, a meditation on birth and death and the connections between generations. Another compelling work, Passage , dates from 1987.