Guli Silberstein is a video artist based and settled in London since 2010. Since 2001 he has created digital video experiences using unique processing techniques, resulting in painterly moving collages exploring nature and the human condition.
The works have been been shown and winning awards in hundreds of festivals and art events worldwide, such as: WRO Media Art Biennale 2019 (included in the curated ‘on tour’ program), Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Omaha, NE USA 2006, Museum on the Seam Jerusalem 2008, 2010, 2019, The Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts London 2007, 2016, NordArt 2007, 2008, 2011, London Short Film Festival 2016, 2017, 2019, Venice Film Week 2019 (best experimental film award), New York Film Week 2017 (best experimental film award), Short Movie Club, Minsk Belarus 2017 (best experimental film award), Transmediale Berlin 2005, 2008 (included in 2005 ‘on tour’ program), Go Short The Netherlands 2015 (nominee for best European art film), Un festival c'est trop court ! In Nice, France 2015 (best experimental film) and many more.
Silberstein's work has been shown alongside artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Bruce Nauman, Mounir Fatmi, Yael Bartana, Michal Rovner, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alfredo Jaar, Douglas Gordon, Chiharu Shiota, Jean-Luc Godard, Harun Farocki, Peter Campus, Tony Oursler, Mark Leckey, and many others.
He graduated from the M.A in Media Studies program (focus on media art and digital production), The New School University, NYC USA in 2001, and from the B.A in Film Screenwriting department from Tel Aviv University in 1997. Inspired by dreams, visions, and memories, his works experiment with video form as poetic expression, and tell visual stories, developing aesthetic-thematic inquiries often involving both public and personal footage, including news media appropriation and close family and travelling videos.
It’s a continuous research of the possibilities inherent in digital video, tracking down errors in coding and peculiar usages of software, to produce moving image assemblies that are forms of new aesthetics. The video material is processed digitally through algorithms, glitch, noise and other disruptions. Images become substance, turning into a sensory experience, moving to other planes of meaning which promote reflection and empathy.
Inspired by the tradition and history of painting, image-processing and early video and film art, the screen becomes in Silberstein's work a surface where colours smear and pictures explode in colourful yet eerie compositions. The video footage is edited ways which juxtapose snippets from bits of reality, showing them in a new light, revealing underlying patterns in human life, environment and perception. A common theme is addressing the fine line between tranquillity and chaos, and fragility of existence, struggling to comprehend the vast intensity of the living experience of the world as it translates through electronic media.
