Using color video Freed captures three mirrors in various positions on a grassy lawn. As the title suggests, Freed employs reflections in the work to signify video’s intrinsic quality of spatial manipulation. In the mirrors, we catch ephemeral glimpses of Freed’s family and friends, surrounding nature and various structures such as nearby seating or an old wooden fence. Across this reflective diptych, Freed manipulates the angle and orientation of the mirrors to divide otherwise uniform textures, frame portraits with juxtaposing perspectives and interfere with anticipated spatial relationships through movement between the frames. The video features abrupt cuts as Freed frequently jumps between angles, rarely lingering on a particular shot for more than a second or two. This fast paced editing results in a jittery, disjointed soundtrack that combines with Freed’s evisceration of her environment to create a potent and compelling meditation on spacial representation in video.
Space Holes
Hermine Freed
1976 00:07:39 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3VideoDescription
About Hermine Freed
Hermine Freed studied painting at Cornell University and New York University. During the late '60s she taught at NYU, working as program editor for an NYU-sponsored series on art books for WNYC. Assisted by colleague Andy Mann, she began using video to produce a series of contemporary artist portraits, beginning with painter James Rosenquist. Although the program did not meet WNYC's broadcast standards, Freed continued to produce the series, showing the tapes to her students and at other venues. In 1972 she was invited to participate in the groundbreaking exhibition Circuit: A Video Invitational by Everson Museum curator David Ross, whose encouragement led her to explore other aspects of the medium and produce a new body of work. Freed continued to produce both documentaries and artworks exploring female perception and self-image. Art Herstory (1974) was made while she was an artist-in-residence at the Television Lab at WNET. Freed taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1972. She passed away in 1998.