Gary Sherman - AMERICAN NIGHT(MARE)

October 13, 2017

Gary Sherman’s installation The American Night(mare) takes its cue from Francois Truffaut’s film Day for Night. The film’s title refers specifically to a Hollywood technique known as “the American night,” in which scenes shot in daylight are manipulated to appear as if shot at twilight. The installation correlates this staging of the cinematic experience—of making day appear as night—to the postmodernist view of history as a mix of fact and fiction. By distorting our perception of reality and destabilizing what we know to be true, The American Night(mare)reflects aspects of our new and shifting views of reality.

GARY SHERMAN is an instructor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Urban Botanicals in the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts and one of the department’s Directors of Operations. He recently co-edited a book with Dr. Sabine Flach, published by Peter Lang Press, entitled Naturally Hypernatural: Hypernatural Landscapes in the Anthropocene.