Serene Velocity1970

Serene Velocity (1970) created a stunning percussive head-on motion by systemically shifting the focal length of a stationary zoom lens as it stared down the center of an empty institutional hallway – thus playing off the contradiction generated by the frames’ heightened flatness and the compositions’ severly overdetermined perspective. Without ever moving the camera, Gehr turned the flourescent geometry of this lliteral Shock Corridor (in the then – new State University of N.Y at Binghamton) into a sort of piston-powered mandala. If Giotto had made action films it would be this. –J. Hoberman, Ernie Gehr, Walter McBean Gallery, S.F. Art Institute 1995.  

Gehr’s best known film Serene Velocity, is also his most audaciously “minimalist” in its approach and therefore perhaps the clearest demonstration of the depth and richness of his artistry……..

Innumerating some of his considerations in making the film Gehr sited among others the 2D/3D reciprocal tension of a two dimensional image…..the spatial and temporal relationship between the spectator and the image on the screen…..the source of power and the kind of energy beamed through space from the projector to the screen and from the screen to the mind. Contradicting the apprarent austerity of its “empty” setting, Serene Velocity offers an infinitely rich experience. The film also does have a suprising physical beauty, in the painterly alteration of thick black squares and bands of white, in the cool flourescent tones of the blues and whites balanced by a red exit sign at the end of the hallway, and in the play between the flat light on the walls and ceiling and the shiny light on the surface of the floor. –David Schwartz, “Gehr at the Turn of the Century”, Serene Intensity: The Films of Ernie Gehr, MOMI 1999