MICHAEL SNOW
JEFF SCHER
PETER ROSEJEFF
TAKAHIKO LIMURA
BARBARA HAMMER
MATTHIAS GROEBEL
SEYMOUR CHWAST
NISI JACOBS

Jeff Scher
Biography

Renowned artist and filmmaker JEFF SCHER, defines himself as a painter working in motion, combining his fascination for the mechanics of the human eye and ideas about perception to create his animations. Scher’s preoccupation is with persistence of vision- the ability of the human mind to create the illusion of movement from discrete images. His work is manifested in two forms; animated films and still images, the delicate works on paper, which were used as frames in each film. “Film is the culmination of every medium man has worked in,” he says. “It has the ability to incorporate painting, architecture, stage performance and story telling. His explosive montages are a unique collision of imagery and sound, bursting with dizzying arrays of color, light, figures, objects, and sexual forms that flit about like unruly thoughts—mere seeing becomes an experience of gut-churning, vibratile ecstasy..

Jeff Scher was born in Connecticut in 1954 and now lives and works in New York City. Scher received his BFA from Bard College in 1976 and a secondary degree from the American film Institute in 1984. His work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Academy Film Archives, Hishorn Museum, and Musee d’Art Moderne, among others.

The New York Times calls Scher’s films “collages of constant metamorphosis” which are “dazzling and mesmerizing to watch.” Time Out Magazine, describing his stills as “Muybridge motion studies for the MTV generation, ” writes: “in Scher’s animated films, lovers tango, elephants morph into winged monkeys and a woman with a come-hither stare flashes thousands of colors.” The exhibition, recently written up in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, will relieve “those who bemoan the navel-gazing tendencies of contemporary art,” as Scher’s work proves that “the forces that shaped Velazquez, Gainsborough, and Sargent – patronage and vanity – still drive innovations in the market.”

Selected Exhibitions
2005 Group Exhibition: Repetitions
Maya Stendhal Gallery
New York, NY

2004 Solo Show: Milk of Amnesia
Animated Films & Works on Paper
Maya Stendhal Gallery
New York, NY

2004
Lost and Found Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Grand Central Videodance Festival, Athens & Thessaloniki Greece
Film Workshop Rotterdam, The Netherlands

2003 Brooklyn Academy of Music,
New York, NY
Spin Cycle
Jessica Murray Projects
New York, NY

2002 You Won’t Remember This
To Preserve and Protect Trailer
Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY

1999 Grand Central
Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI
New York Underground Film Festival, New York, NY
Dance on Film, Lincoln Center, New York, NY
Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, NY
Anthology Archives, New York, NY
Black Maria Film Festival, Jersey City, NJ
Scratch, Paris, France
The Sundance Channel

1998 Bang- Bang
New York Underground Film Festival, New York, NY
Best Experimental Film, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, IL
Cinemateque, San Francisco, CA
Millennium, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
P.S. 1, New York, NY
Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI
Sid
BBC Short Film Festival, London, England
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Museum of Art, Bordeaux, France
P.S. 1, New York, NY
National Art Gallery, Washington D.C.
Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI
Humboldt International Film Festival, Arcata, CA
Best Surrealist Film, Oberhausen Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany
Ocularis, New York, NY
New York Children’s Film Festival, New York, NY
The Sundance Channel

Selected Awards

2002 Creative Capital Grant
2001 Creative Capital Grant
1997 Jerome Foundation
1992 Jerome Foundation
1989 Connecticut Commission of the Arts
1986 New England Filmmaker Fellowship
1980 National Endowment for the Arts

Teaching

School of Visual Arts, Graphic Design M.F.A. Program, Presently Teaching
Columbia University, 1990-1999. Graduate School of the Arts
State University of New York, Purchase College, 1997-1999
New York University, 1996-1998. Film and Animation Professor
Yale University, 1998-2002. Graduate School of the Arts
Bard College, 1974-1976. Film and Animation Professor