About paulsharits

Paul Jeffrey Sharits (1943–1993) was an American visual artist and avant-garde filmmaker widely regarded as one of the most radical and influential figures in post-World War II experimental cinema. Born on February 7, 1943 in Denver, Colorado, Sharits spent his life pushing the boundaries of film as a medium, stripping cinema down to its rawest elements—light, color, duration, perception, and materiality—and rebuilding it into something elemental, visceral, and deeply physical. 

Early Life and Education

Sharits grew up in Denver, where his early attraction to art led him to study at the University of Denver’s School of Art, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. During this time he formed a close relationship with Stan Brakhage, a pioneer of American underground cinema whose own experimental approach deeply shaped the young artist’s sensibilities. 

Sharits then went on to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Design at Indiana University Bloomington, where he began turning more fully toward filmmaking as his principal medium. Here he was exposed to a vibrant avant-garde culture and started to experiment with the physical apparatus of film rather than its narrative potential. 

Artistic Philosophy and Structural Film

Sharits became a central figure in what critics later termed the “structural film” movement—a strand of experimental cinema that emerged in the mid-1960s. Structural filmmakers, including Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Michael Snow, and Sharits, rejected traditional storytelling, focusing instead on the fundamental properties of film: the strip of celluloid, the projector’s mechanics, the flicker effect, and the viewer’s perceptual response. 

In Sharits’ own words, his aim was to "abandon imitation and illusion and enter directly into the higher drama of [filmic material]—celluloid, individual frames, projectors, light beams, screen surfaces, and the retinal screen of human perception." This declaration captures his pursuit of immediacy in cinema, where the mechanics of film become the subject itself rather than vehicles for representing a pre-existing world. 

Innovations: Flicker Films and Film Materiality

In the mid-1960s Sharits first gained wide attention for a series of striking flicker films—works composed of rapidly alternating frames of color and black (or stark imagery), designed to produce intense optical and psychological effects on the viewer. Iconic examples include:

Ray Gun Virus (1966): A film constituted of fluctuating monochrome and blank frames that produced rhythmic pulses of light.
 

Piece Mandala/End War (1966): Combining intense color shifts with fragmented human imagery, this film interweaved meditative and confrontational elements.
 

N:O:T:H:I:N:G (1968) and T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1968): Works that fused rapid flicker with associative imagery, challenging conventional cinematic passage of time and mood.
 

These films were less interested in representing events than in creating a sensory, bodily experience—to “flicker” someone into a heightened state, where vision itself becomes active and immersive. As the Harvard Film Archive notes, Sharits’ use of rhythmic visual and sound elements was intended to penetrate the viewer’s perception deeply, creating a participatory cinematic encounter rather than passive viewing. 

Sharits also explored how the physical filmstrip could be used as a sculptural or painterly object. His series of works known as Frozen Film Frames—film strips mounted between panes of Plexiglas—revealed the underlying structure of the film medium, akin to displaying the scores of a musician or the brushstrokes of a painter as art in themselves. 

Locational Films and Multiple Projections

In the early 1970s, Sharits expanded his work into installation art, developing what he called “locational films.” These pieces dramatically reconfigured how audiences encountered cinema by taking film out of the traditional theater and placing it within gallery and museum spaces. Instead of a single projector and screen, these works involved multiple 16 mm projectors running looped films simultaneously, often side-by-side or overlapping. 

One of the best-known examples is Shutter Interface (1975). This installation used four synchronized projectors each showing a loop of colored frames punctuated by black frames. The projections overlapped to produce complex pulsating fields of color across a wall, while specially designed soundtracks emphasized the mechanical rhythms of the shutters themselves. The effect was immersive, hypnotic, and deliberately anti-illusionistic—foregrounding the film’s means of production rather than disguising them. 

Other notable installations include 3rd Degree (1982), which used multiple projections, mirrors, and a sculptural arrangement of equipment to explore perception, rhythm, and material fragility. These works helped establish a lineage between avant-garde film and later forms of installation art and media environments. 

Teaching, Exhibitions, and Influence

Sharits was also a committed educator and theorist. He taught at institutions such as the Maryland Institute College of Art, Antioch College, and—from 1973 until his death—at the State University of New York, Buffalo’s Center for Media Study, where he taught alongside notable peers including Hollis Frampton and Tony Conrad. 

His films and installations were widely exhibited in avant-garde film programs, galleries, and museums throughout his life and after, including exhibitions at the Bykert Gallery (NYC), Walker Art Center, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Centre Pompidou, and others both in the U.S. and Europe. Solo retrospectives and exhibitions continued well after his death, highlighting the continued relevance of his work. 

Later Years and Personal Struggles

Sharits’ later life was marked by personal challenges. He experienced significant struggles with mental health, including bipolar disorder, and endured physical injuries—including being shot in the late 1980s during an incident he described as a case of mistaken identity—and other health traumas. 

In 1993, at the age of 50, Paul Sharits passed away in Buffalo, New York. While some sources note that he died quietly at home, his early death cut short a career that had already deeply impacted experimental film and continues to influence contemporary multimedia art. 

Legacy and Continued Impact

Paul Sharits’ legacy is profound. He helped redefine cinema from a narrative, representational medium into a material, perceptual, and ecological experience. His films are studied for their radical interrogation of film as light, color, rhythm, and human sensation. His locational films presaged contemporary media installation art, and his flicker films remain reference points for discussions about perception, opticality, and the body-mind relation in art. 

Today, his work is preserved by institutions such as Anthology Film Archives, distributed by organizations like The Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Canyon Cinema, and presented regularly in film archives, museums, and festivals around the world. His influence extends into video art, immersive installation practices, and art that foregrounds the mechanisms of its own production. 

Paul Sharits remains celebrated as a visionary whose obsessive exploration of film’s fundamental elements opened new avenues for cinema and media art, making him one of the most compelling and enduring voices in the history of avant-garde film. 

Paul J. Sharits Estate and website managed by Christopher Sharits csharits@comcast.net www.christophersharits.com

Source: Wikipedia;  Lux; Harvard Film Archives; Greene Naftali Gallery; Met Museum