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Exhibition

Pat O'Neill

Three Answers
April 20–August 4, 2019
Floor 7

A pioneer of experimental cinema, the Los Angeles artist Pat O’Neill developed innovative techniques for radically altering imagery in the predigital era. His highly inventive 16mm films from the 1960s and 1970s explore dense layering and movement within a still frame. In recent years, O’Neill has reworked several of his early films into multiple projections. The dynamic three-channel installation Saugus Series (1974/2014) will be joined by the films 7362 (1967) and Let’s Make a Sandwich (1978), a suite of related framed pieces, and an accompanying online screening program.

In conjunction with Pat O’Neill: Three Answers, SFMOMA will spotlight O’Neill’s contemporary moving image work in a June weekend presentation (June 6–9, 2019) in the Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box. A second film program on June 22 in the SFMOMA Phyllis Wattis Theater will center on the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis (1976–81), a screening collective founded by a group of filmmakers that included Pat and Beverly O’Neill.


Exhibition Preview

​Pat O'Neill, 7362, 1967 (still)
​Pat O'Neill  7362, 1967 (still);
Pat O'Neill, Saugus Series, 1974/2014
Pat O'Neill, Saugus Series, 1974/2014
black and white image of Let's Make a Sandwich of 16mm still
Pat O’Neill: Three Answers (SFMOMA installation view); photo: Katherine Du Tiel
Pat O’Neill, Saugus Series, 1974/2014 (SFMOMA installation view); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; photo: Katherine Du Tiel
Pat O’Neill, 7362, 1967 (still); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Lookout Mountain Studios; photo: courtesy Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; and Monitor Gallery, Rome
Pat O’Neill, 7362, 1967 (still); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Lookout Mountain Studios; photo: courtesy Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; and Monitor Gallery, Rome
Pat O’Neill, Saugus Series, 1974/2014 (composite); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Lookout Mountain Studios; photo: courtesy Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; and Monitor Gallery, Rome
Pat O’Neill, Saugus Series, 1974/2014 (composite); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Lookout Mountain Studios; photo: courtesy Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; and Monitor Gallery, Rome
Pat O’Neill, Let’s Make a Sandwich, 1978 (still); courtesy the artist; Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; and Monitor Gallery, Rome; © Lookout Mountain Studios

Online Screenings

This exhibition features both original and multiple-projection versions of Saugus Series from the SFMOMA collection—presented as an online screening program here and as a three-channel video installation in the galleries.
Watch


Header image: Pat O’Neill, Saugus Series, 1974/2014 (excerpt); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Lookout Mountain Studios; photo: courtesy Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; and Monitor Gallery, Rome