"Silent Movies" at Gallery 825
by Holly Willis
Artweek September 2000

… Breath of Venus is a rather stunning piece built out of a stack of four monitors encased in a cabinet. The structure itself resembles a section of film footage, with each monitor being a frame. In the lowest frame, an animated pair of lungs moves inward and out, breathing. In the upper three frames, a naked swimmer gently rises through the green and blue-hued water. Neither quite an animation nor live action, the swimmer resembles a moving painting, and the piece as a whole not only plays with the notions of the specificity of the film and video apparatus, but brings to the foreground the impact of images on our own bodies. Indeed, it's difficult not to find your own breathing affected by the swimmer's endless movement up toward air.