Objects with Destinations is a study of the perceptible presence of an object in a video recording and the transition from its physical and material state to an immaterial state, produced by using a synthesizer.

The objects selected belong to the normal, everyday environment: a cup, a paper sack, pliers, the corner of a table, a ring, a page, a grill, a syringe, a hammer and a chair. Three successive states of the same object appear, one after the other and from left to right, within the same screen: first recorded, then solarised and in bright colour, and finally translucent and insubstantial. In some very rare sequences the third image is subject to further decomposition. It is fragmented, doubled and superimposed, or masked by the mosaic procedure. The artist plays on moving objects and their functions from their context in an evolution in image, then their disappearance in the translucid trace.

Objects with Destinations is the latest work of the studies on the video medium directed towards pictorial effects, collected in Selected Works I. It's distinguished from the rest, by the treatment of isolated objects against plain backgrounds of bright colours, which recall Pop Art and simulationism Ë the conception of the image linked to technical reproduction and the consumer society, which was substituted for painting in the 1960's.But Gary Hill deconstructs this icon judgement by providing a destiny for the object, which disappears in its final transparency.

Thérèse Beyler