THOMAS DEXTER

is a multi-disciplinary artist working with the language of moving images.

Dexter's projects have been featured at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NYC, PS1/MOMA, Microscope Gallery, Experimental Intermedia, Roulette Intermedium, Issue Project Room, The New York Museum of Art and Design, Sight and Sound Festival, the Mononoaware Festival, The Lesley Heller Workspace, and ESP TV among others. Dexter received an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Bennington College. Vitae

contact :: thomas.dexter(at)gmail.com

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  • WILDFIRE I - EXCERPT (2020)

    2 Channel 4K Video, 10:00 looping.

  • ECHO (2015)

    Aluminium tape, light kit, dimensions variable

  • SCREENS: TRAVELING MATTE (2017

    Single channel HD Video. 2:00

    An accident captured on my cellphone is occluded by a motion-tracked digital painting. This "screening" both distances and universalizes, the image and the barrier become one substance in memory.

  • SCREENS: CONSTRUCTION/SIGHT (2017

    Debris mesh, hardware, fasteners, 12' x 9' x 8'

  • SCREENS: TWO BARRIERS (2017

    White noise generators, tape, 9' x 4' x 1'

  • SPIN CYCLE: HORIZON I - IV (2012)

    Looping single channel HD video and sound. A power-drill mounted HD camera flattens and warps space as it approaches its representational and mechanical limits. All visual effects and sounds were derived from the camera apparatus itself.

    Installation shot from Radiator Arts 2019
  • Isaac Newton - in an undated letter to John Locke

    The manner was this. I looked a very little while upon ye sun in a looking­glass wth my right eye & then turned my eyes into a dark corner of my chamber & winked to observe the impression made & the circles of colours wch encompassed it & how they decayed by degrees & at last vanished. in a few hours time I had brought my eys to such a pass that I could look upon no bright object with either eye but I saw ye sun before me, so that I durst neither write nor read but to recover ye use of my eyes shut myself up in my chamber made dark for three days together & used all means to divert my imagination from ye Sun.

    But now I have been very well for many years, tho I am apt to think that if I durst venture my eyes I could still make ye phantasm return by the power of my fansy.

    Using the destruction of the camera as allegory, Opticks (I) explores the inter­dependance of the external world and the sensory medium.

  • OPTICKS (2014)

    11min looping 2 channel HD video and sound. Inspired by Newton's early scientific investigations into the nature of light and visual perception (sometimes involving direct self-experimentation)

  • LEILA BORDREUIL: EPISODES ET MUTATIONS WITH DORON SADJA / PERFORMED BY MIVOS QUARTET & THOMAS DEXTER (2018)

    Immersive light installation / performance @ Issue Project Room

  • NERVOUS INDEX (2015)

    Liquid graphite on paper, 22" x 30" Br>

    A series of procedural drawings exploiting a hand tremor

  • WAVE/WAVE (2018)

    Found 16mm film transferred to HD Video, :30 Loop.

    Graphite on Dura-lar 24" x 36"

  • TIME (AFTER) TIME (2015)

    Napoleon Gallery, Philadelphia PA

  • HOUSE I (2015)

    2 channel HD Video, 20:00 loop

    From The Sacrifice, by Andrei Tarkovsky

  • AS SEEN ON TV)

    1:20PM, APRIL 22ND, 1978 (2015)

    SD Video and sound 2:30. Custom enclosure 57” x 16.5” x 25”

    From The Los Angeles Angels vs.The Minnesota Twins

  • 4X DISPLACEMENT (2015)

    HD Video. 9:45 loop (excerpt)

    From the home movies of Sigmund Freud, 1930 – 1939

  • HOUSE II (2015)

    HD Video, 12:00 loop

    From The Sacrifice, by Andrei Tarkovsky

  • OPTICAL / TRACK (EXCERPTS)

    Single channel HD Video, Optical Sound, Audio Hardware. 64:00

    Using a rail journey between Chicago and New York City as raw material, the image is flipped and doubled to approximate an audio waveform passing through the sound head of a film projector. Patterning in the landscape (rural, urban, empty, busy, geometric, formless) is rephotographed live and generates the soundtrack.