Jeff Warrin is a Bolinas, California-based filmmaker, photographer and installation artist. He has presented work at the Whitney Biennial, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Sundance Film Festival. As a member of the collaborative art-trio, Silt (1990-2005), he co-created a body of work that probed both the intimate and expansive potentialities of the projected image, exploring layers of form in the natural world through kinetic and material engagement with light, water, earth and flora. In 2005, he followed the collaborative, large-scale installation/performance work with Silt by turning to solo photography, eventually developing a technique using long-exposures and a hand-held camera as a somatic and gestural participation with the wild landscape surrounding his coastal home. In 2015 he founded a production company, Metabolic Films, and began producing and directing narrative films that explore the reciprocity between human perception and the landscapes we inhabit. The narrative short, “The Far Near Shore,” was completed in 2017. His mid-length feature, “All the Branches in Me,” premieres in 2022.
A Brief History of Silt (Keith Evans, Christian Farrell, Jeff Warrin)
The early Super 8 films of Silt, like “Kuch Nai” and “Shadows of the Son” —both award-winners at the San Francisco International Film Festival—used elaborately primitive re-photographing setups, projecting through water, smoke and other materials to create a handmade, dimensional cinema. By the mid-nineties these apparatuses became part of live performances, where multiple projections created a combinatory choreography that extended the human touch into the field of projection. The pieces, “Landsend” and “For the Unaided Eye and Hand Lens,” both performed behind a diaphanous, rear-projection screen, invited viewers to connect the space between the images and the makers.
By the late nineties Silt’s work had expanded out of a traditional “screening” context and began incorporating sculptural and kinetic objects as three-dimensional extensions of the moving image. By activating an entire gallery as an image space, viewers were encouraged to participate perceptually/bodily in a multidimensional environment. “All Pieces of a River Shore,” an installation/performance at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, incorporated a 25-foot long hanging projection apparatus which spun around the gallery space like a cinematic orrery, encircling the audience. The installation, “Field Studies #3,” part of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, invited viewers out of the theaters and into an enormous tent pitched in a snowy courtyard outside, where blocks of ice and pools of water transformed images into spatial catalysts.
CV
JEFF WARRIN
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, 1965
Lives and works in Bolinas, California.
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS
Tributairies, Bolinas Gallery, Bolinas, CA. February, 2018
Tributaries, Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA August, 2018
The Language of Prehistoric Sound, Farmstand Gallery, Bolinas, CA March, 2017
Stone Soup, “Boutique Vizique,” Ghent, Belgium June, 2011
Sounds Like Art (part of Lost Treasures: From Bay Area Art Archives), Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, CA May 8, 2011
Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, “Pieces of Eight: Fragments, Curiosities, and Hidden Realities,” Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA March 2, 2011
Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, “1990-1999,” Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA November 21, 2010
Strange Gallery, Los Angeles, CA April, 2010
Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI March 18-19, 2004
Time-Based Art Festival, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR September, 2003
2003 Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah January 17-19, 2003
PENUMBRA, Artist Television Access, S.F., CA September 22, 2002
2002 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY May 2002
The Seventh Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, SF, CA March 14, 2002
San Francisco Cinemateque: 40 Years in Focus, 44th San Francisco International Film Festival April 29, 2001
A Place Not Like Home, Anthology Film Archive, NY, NY November, 2000
hearmusic w/ John Ingle, Headlands Center for the Arts, CA September 24, 2000
Black Box, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA February 25, 2000
Museum of Modern Art, NY, NY April 23, 1999
Intimate Worlds, New York Museum of Modern Art, NY, NY Feb.19, 1999
Projection Art Lab, The Lab, San Francisco November 22, 1997
Bay Area Now, Yerba Buena Center For the Arts, , S.F. June- August, 1997
VIENNALE; Vienna International Film Festival, Austria October 28, 1996
Wettwerbren, Hamburg International Film Festival, Germany June 1997
Questions of Intimacy, Image Innovation Symposium, Rocky Mountain Film Center, Boulder CO Summer, 1997
Projection Still Gallery LASCA, LA, CA April 1997
Eighth Floor Gallery, NY, NY May, 25 1997
Dreaming in the Dark, Chicago Filmmakers Chicago, IL April, 1997
US Super-8 Film/ Video Festival, Rutgers, Univ., NJ February 7&8, 1997
New Bay Area Work, Artist Television Access, S.F., CA December 7, 1996
Texture of Memory, Film Arts Foundation Festival, S.F., CA November 3, 1996
Naked 8,Melbourne Super-8 Kiosk Film Festival, Australia October 26, 1996
39th San Francisco International Film Festival, CA May 1996
Between Screen and Page: the Motion of the Written Seen, San Francisco Cinematheque, CA March 29, 96
homescreening, San Francisco Cinematheque, CA December 16, 95
Serendipity, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA December 5, 1995
Melbourne Super-8 Kiosk Film Festival, Australia September 16, 1995
Born of Fire, Gilman Street Gallery, Berkeley, CA July, 1995
San Francisco Cinematheque, CA September 7, 1994
New Journeys, New Sensations, 37th San Francisco International Film Festival, CA May 1994
London Filmmakers Co-op, UK March 11, 1994
AVE Festival, Arnheim, Netherlands November 4-10, 1993
Terra Incognita, Film Arts Foundation Festival, S.F., CA November 4, 1993
Disorientalism, ATA Gallery, S.F., CA June, 1994
Chicago Filmmakers Chicago, IL April, 1993
Den Haag Art Institute, Netherlands May, 1993
HBK, Braunshweig, Germany February 7, 1993
SOLO SHOWS (w/ Silt)
Selected Works, Chicago 8: Small Gauge Film Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL January 6, 2015
Parallax, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin Headlands, CA November 16, 2003
LBRTR: Interference and Periodic Objects, The Exploratorium, SF, CA November 11, 1999
Field Studies # 2, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin, CA October 23, 1998
Selected Works 91-98, Millennium Film Workshop, NY, NY May 23, 1998
Selected Works 91-98, Anthology Film Archives, NY, NY May 22, 1998
Field Studies #1, Museum ofModern Art, NY, NY May 21, 1998
New Work, Orgone Cinema, Pittsburg, PA May 16, 1998
New and Selected Works, UC San Diego, S.D., CA. November 23, 1996
New and Selected Works, Edison Electric Gallery, Vancouver, B.C. December 1&2, 1995
New and Selected Works, 911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, WA November 30, 1995
Total Mobile Homesic, Total Mobile Home Micro Cinema, SF, CA November 3,1995
New and Selected Works, First Person Cinema, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO February 20, 1995
New and Selected Works, Utah Film & Video Center, SLC, UT February 17, 1995
Collaborations & Encrustations, Filmforum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art December 4, 1999
Reentries and Selections, ATA Gallery, S.F., CA December 11, 1993
Erosions & Accretions, Chicago Filmmakers, Chicago, IL May 29, 1993
Erosions & Accretions, San Francisco Cinematheque, SF, CA February 4, 1993
AWARDS
1st Place, New Visions, 37th San Francisco International Film Festival, 1994 (Kuch Nai)
Certificate of Merit, New Visions, 39th San Francisco International
Film Festival, 1996 (Shadows of the Son)
3rd place, US Super-8 Film Festival, 1997 (Shadows of the Son)
San Francisco Bay Guardian, Goldie Award, 1995
AEA Award, Bay Area Video Coalition, 1998
ARTIST RESIDENCIES
Penny Stamps Distinguished Visitors Series, University of Michigan, March 2004
Headlands Center for the Arts: Artists-in-Residence February-December, 1998
The Exploratorium: Artists-in-Residence, June-November, 1999
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
San Francisco Art Institute, Visiting Faculty, 2003-2004
INSTALLATION/ PERFORMANCE
Narrative of an Expedition..., WORK Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI March 10-20, 2004
Parallax, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin Headlands, CA November 16, 2003
Luminal Lines, Time-Based Art Festival, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR September 2003
Field Studies #3, 2003 Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah January 17-19, 2003
All Pieces of a River Shore, 2002 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, NY May 18-19, 2002
The nocturnal movement of solvents and radioactivity, under the direction of black ants and honeybees, w/ SF Cinemateque, Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard, SF, CA July 2001
Handscrolls, Refusalon (w/ FAF), San Francisco, CA May 2001
Kymatic Projections, Headlands Center for the Arts, CA April, 1998
Pnumbra (black box), “Black Box”, CCAC, Oakland, CA February 2000
Apocatastasis, Headlands Center for the Arts, CA, March 2000
LBRTR: Interference and Periodic Objects, The Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA, November 1999
Field Studies #1, Museum of Modern Art, NY, NY May, 1998
Lagoon, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin Headlands, CA July, 1998
A Tent is a Soft House, The Lab, San Francisco, CA November, 1997
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
(as Jeff Warrin)
All the Branches in Me (2022, 50 min.)
The Far, Near Shore (2017, 12 min.)
(w/ Silt)
Eclipse (1999, 15m., S-8, multiple projectors)
Chromatic spectra in aqueous medium (1999, 3min., 16mm)
Archaeopteryx dreaming, (1999, 7min., 16mm)
Paranaturalist Mirror, (1999, 1.5 min., 35mm)
Kino Eyedeograms in Plant Morphology #6, (1999, 9min., 16mm)
Urphanomen (1998>, 10min., S-8, multiple projectors)
Sisyrinchium Californicum, (1998, 2 min., 35mm)
For the Unaided Eye andHand Lens (1997>, 10 min. S-8, multiple projectors)
Shadows of the Son (1996,7 min. S-8)
Let’s Go To Bury (1994, 6min., S-8, multiple projectors)
Aspiratia (1994, 15 min., S-8)
Kuch Nai (1992, 38 min., S-8)
Grapefruitfilm (1990, 2.5 min, S-8)
Conflict (1990, 9min.,S-8, multiple projectors)
SELECTED SEMINARS AND GUEST LECTURES
University of Michigan, 2004
California College of Arts and Crafts, 1996-2005
San Francisco Art Institute, 1993-2002
California Institute for the Arts, 1996, 2003
California State University Sonoma, Hutchins School, 1995-96
Film Arts Foundation, 1993-99
San Francisco State University, 1994-95
University of California, Berkeley, 1996-2004
University of Colorado, Boulder, 1995
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz, Steve Seid (Editors). Radical Light. Berkeley: UC Press, 2010. pgs. 212, 213, 218, 219, 254, 293, 294. 337 n13, 291
Mark Johnstone and Lelsie Aboud. Epicenter: Sf Bay Area Art Now. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002. pgs. 226-229
The NY Museum of Modern Art, SF Cinemateque (Editors). Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films. “I Came into an 8mm World” -Kathy Geritz. San Francisco: SF Cinemateque, 1999. pgs. 39-50
Keith Evans, Christian Farrell, Jeff Warrin. “Silt…On Seven Giant Sea Turtles.” Cantrills Filmnotes vols. 79,80 Nov. 1995: pgs. 67-70