Image: Microscope Gallery, New York
Microscope Gallery in New York will present ‘Spectra Obscura’, a solo exhibition of new, recent and historic works by Frank Gillette, from 10 September to 17 October 2026. An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, 10 September, from 6 to 8pm.
The exhibition marks the New York debut of the complete ‘The Symbiotic Blues’, Gillette’s trilogy of three-channel video works completed between 2017 and 2022. The series comprises ‘Riverrun’ (2017–18), ‘Spearlight’ (2019) and ‘Blackseer’ (2022). Each work has three separate video channels of differing durations, producing combinations that do not repeat.
Also included are selections from Gillette’s 1987 ‘Chthonic Chimera’ Polaroid series, the videos ‘Hark! Hork!’ (1972–73) and ‘Symptomatic Syntax’ (1981), and ‘Rio Grande River Bed’ (1974). ‘Chthonic Chimera’ brings together staged assemblages of sea shells, flowers, butterfly wings, coral skeletons, insects and stones. ‘Rio Grande River Bed’ consists of 81 colour instant Polaroids of the cracked Rio Grande riverbed arranged in a large grid.
‘Hark! Hork!’, a single-channel video included in the 1975 Whitney Biennial, combines black-and-white imagery of the ocean, sky, waterfalls, fields, seagulls and a limulus with a largely music-based soundtrack.
