Mary Helena Clark Shorts
Various, 90, NR
USA
Presented by: Johns Hopkins University - Film and Media Studies
Director: Mary Helena Clark
Her works have been exhibited internationally including the 2017 Whitney Biennial; New York, NY; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; Stuttgart, Germany, Kadist; San Francisco, CA, JOAN, Los Angeles, CA, , e-flux; New York, NY, Contemporary Art Centre; Vilnius, Lithuania, Grazer Kunstverein; Graz, Austria, Laura Bartlett Gallery; London, UK, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and at festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
Formerly Baltimore-based artist Mary Helena Clark returns for an evening program of her short films. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Mary Helena Clark’s film and video work utilizes an open poetics. With a minimalist aesthetic, the structure of these films delineate the narrative dimension of cinema while veering away from the logic of the straight line. They construct miniature labyrinths of meaning before our eyes, at each turn opening out towards the indiscernible and unsayable. As we round each corner, we’re delighted to feel a thread run smooth across our palms. The program includes short films from 2008 to 2018.
Valves, 2017, 2 minutes (digital)
A prelude.
Sound Over Water, 2009, 6 minutes (16mm)
Blue sky and blue sea meet on emulsion.
By foot-candle light, 2011, 9 minutes (multiple digital formats)
A walk through the proscenium wings. You close your eyes and suddenly it is dark.
Orpheus (outtakes), 2012, 6 minutes (16mm)
“Using footage from Cocteau’s Orphée, Clark optically prints an interstitial space where the ghosts of cinema lurk beyond and within the frames.” – Andrea Picard
And the sun flowers, 2008, 5 minutes (digital)
“Henry James had his figure in the carpet, Da Vinci found faces on the wall. Within this wallpaper: a floral forest of hidden depth and concealment, the hues and fragrance of another era. Surface decoration holds permeable planes, inner passages. There emerges a hypnotic empyrean flower, a solar fossil a speaking anemone, of paper, of human muscle, of unknown origin, delivering an unreasonable message of rare tranquility.” – Mark McElhatten
The Dragon is the Frame, 2014, 14 minutes
Delphi Falls, 2017, 20 minutes