Dream Light: Selections from the PAMM Video Art Collection

Over the course of five weeks, PAMM will screen a series of single-channel video artworks in the museum’s auditorium, presenting one video per week on a continuous loop during open hours. The selected works share nonlinear narratives and surrealistic imagery, displaying effects that range from the ethereal to the phantasmagoric. In evoking the act of dreaming, each video underscores how artists have used moving pictures as an experimental means with which to probe subjectivity and explore the intricacies of psychological experience. The series serves to highlight the importance of time-based media within the context of PAMM’s growing collection.

Thursday, February 25, 2016 – Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Luis Gispert
b. 1972,  Jersey City, New Jersey; lives in Brooklyn

Stereomongrel, 2004-2005
35mm film transferred to DVD, with sound
Running time 12 minutes
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Mark and Nedra Oren


©Luis Gispert. 

Luis Gispert’s Stereomongrel comprises an epic, hallucinatory journey seen through the eyes of a twelve year old girl. Incorporating elaborate staging and costumes while combining live action with 3D technology and stop-motion animation, the work merges aspects of Hollywood high-production thriller genres with the slick aesthetics of hip-hop music videos and fashion magazines.

Thursday, March 3, 2016 – Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Youssef Nabil
b. 1972, Cairo; lives in New York, Miami, and Paris

I Saved My Belly Dancer, 2015
Digital video, with sound
Running time 12 minutes
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, donation in process


©Youssef Nabil. Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Paris

Featuring actors Salma Hayek and Tahar Rahim, I Saved My Belly Dancer is an hypnotic allegory of Egypt’s cultural heritage and the shifting perceptions of the position of women in the region. The film laments the fading of once-proud and meaningful traditions—such as the art of belly dancing—amid the changing ideological circumstances of the artist’s native country. At the same time, it hints at the possibility that such legacies may yet survive both in memory and in exile.

Thursday, March 10, 2016 – Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Raymond Pettibon
b. 1957, Tucson; lives in Hermosa Beach, California

Sunday Night and Saturday Morning, 2005
Digital color video animation, with sound
Running time 16 minutes, 45 seconds
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds from the PAMM Collectors Council


©Raymond Pettibon. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

In Raymond Pettibon’s Sunday Night and Saturday Morning, the Los Angeles-based artist presents a delirious stream of animated images inspired by a host of pop-cultural sources, from comic books to film noir. The result fluctuates between absurdist collage and sinister fable.

Thursday March 17, 2016 – Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Carrie Mae Weems
b. 1953, Portland, Oregon; lives in Brooklyn and Syracuse, New York

May Days Long Forgotten, 2002
Digital color video, with sound
Running time 4 minutes, 20 seconds
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, purchase with funds given in memory of Denise Andrews


©Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

May Days Long Forgotten depicts young African American girls dancing around a maypole against a cloud-filled, blue-sky background. The title references the May Day holiday, which marks the onset of spring and is also the traditional day for honoring the working classes and the international labor movement. Employing the type of imagery of happy children that commonly appears in political propaganda, the video subtly suggests the struggle for social and economic justice while exalting youth, innocence, and renewal.

Thursday, March 24 – Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Autumn Casey
b. 1987, Dallas; lives in Miami

Elysian Fields, 2014
Digital color video, with sound
Running time 16 minutes, 23 seconds
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of George Sánchez-Calderón


©Autumn Casey. Courtesy of the artist and Primary Projects, Miami.

Autumn Casey’s stirring Elysian Fields features an elderly woman—the artist’s grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease—sitting bare-shouldered in a chair in a grassy field, flowers in her short, white hair, singing along to Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” “The Summer Wind,” and other classic American jazz standards. Whenever the video’s protagonist hears the music of her youth, she is transported back in time to the years she spent working in the entertainment industry. The hazy, verdant landscape that surrounds her suggests a dream of a sublime afterlife.