Stephen Vitiello

Stephen Vitiello

60 (1964-11-05)
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Stephen Vitiello is an American visual and sound artist. Originally a punk guitarist he is influenced by video artist Nam June Paik who he worked with after meeting in 1991.

Most Known for...

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Your Day Is My Night 2014 (5.5)

Immigrant residents of a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown share their stories of personal and political upheaval. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of the Chinese in the United States through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical movement pieces. Shot in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of Chinatown, this provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life.
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Drink Deep 1991 (6.3)

Drink Deep is a lyrical vision of friendship, hidden secrets, and desires. Cohen uses several types of film image to add texture to the layered composition. Beautiful shades of grey, silver, black and blue echo the water, reminiscent of early photography and silverprints. Cohen says, "The piece was constructed primarily from footage I’d shot of skinnydippers at swimming holes in Georgia and rural Pennsylvania. It’s about water and memory and stories just submerged. It is also, in part, a response to thinking about censorship. I would say that Drink Deep is both unabashedly and deceptively romantic. Surface, flow, and undertow. What looks like paradise is always paradise lost."
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ws.3 2003 (6.5)

ws.3 is a minimalist investigation of the texture of landscape. A windy, abstract soundtrack accompanies close-ups of a lunar-like, brilliant blue and white terrain. As the camera arcs rapidly and images move in and out of focus, sky and desert seem to merge. Cho erodes distinctions between documentary and abstract representation, producing a complex experience of place.
Stephen Vitiello

Stephen Vitiello

N/A

N/A

Most Known for...

Movie Picture

Buoy 2008

The golden, barren landscape of Death Valley, California, recorded by Cho from a moving car, provides the luminous and mysterious texture of Buoy. As the title suggests, this work reflects on the polar extremes of this desert, which was once the floor of a vast sea, now traversed by sight-seeing tourists. In contrast to the horizontal landscape, which floats ceaselessly past Cho's camera, vertical "strata" pattern the imagery, creating an axis between natural landscape and Cho's composition. Cho accumulated his Death Valley footage over several years; the vertical patterning further represents the collapse of this footage into what appears to be a continuous drive through the desert.