Shalom Gorewitz

Last Name: 
Gorewitz
First Name: 
Shalom

Gorewitz has been working with video and computer technology since the late 1960s to create poetic, intellectual and politically charged art videos relating to faith, relationships and social issues. He works alone with prototype and low-end computer and video systems to collect, transform and edit image and sound. The results are lyrical contemplations of mundane realities in which the background becomes the landscape for imaginary scenarios. He has also created installations, art documentaries and telecommunication art events. He has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has worked in Residence at the Experimental Television Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Beersheva Institute of Art in Israel. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix. Gorewitz has been working as an artist since 1971 after studying at the California Institute of the Arts with Nam June Paik, Gene Youngblood, and others. During the 1970's he collaborated with dancers, poets, and performers on multichannel installations and single channel videotapes, often experimenting with "fixed" keyers and voltage control devices. He wrote a continuing column about the early days of video art for Changes in the Arts Magazine. In 1977, he met David Jones who invited him to the Experimental Television Center where he worked regularly for the next 14 years. During 1978 he produced the first weekly artist program on NYC Cable Television, Raster, in which he featured his own work as well as work by other artists. The show originated from, and could be seen on Thursday nights at 11:30 at Ahhzzz's Electronic Lounge (in Hell's Kitchen, the first cabled area of NYC.) During the 1980's Gorewitz' received commissions, grants, fellowships, and other support to focus on video art projects. During this prolific period, he created work that was featured in three Whitney Museum Biennials and many other festivals, galleries, and public spaces internationally. His work from this decade include Run, After the Storm, A Small Jubilee, Damaged Visions, The End of Television, 10,000 Things, Promised Land, and many other videos. His video and work on paper were represented by the Semaphore Gallery from 1983 until 1989, when it closed. Many of these videos were shown on regional and national public and cable television. During the past seven years, Gorewitz has accomplished considerable research with new digital processing systems leading to work such as Eclipse Unguarded Moments, Devotion, Dark Light, The Last Tourist and others using nonlinear processing and editing systems. Since 1993, he has also created numerous prints and paintings based on digital recording and processing. Recent paintings were selected for Digital Traces, a group show of seven artists using elements of computer processing in their work, which was exhibited during May, 1999 at 55 Mercer Street Gallery in NYC. Gorewitz is a Professor of Multimedia Art at Ramapo College in New Jersey. He lives in NYC.