“The films of David Gatten brand the brain and the retina with equal force. They consist partly of cerebral puzzles and partly of lyrical reveries, and their central drama lies in the space between, where facts transform into poetry and transient experiences are assimilated into systems of knowledge. As they construct around them gigantic conceptual edifices, his films contain sequences that decompose mental activity, obliterate the formation of thoughts. No Hollywood director, no matter how big their budget, offers images as carefully calibrated as Gatten’s.”
Tom McCormack, Moving Image Source

Since 1992, the films of David Gatten have consistently explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image. These movies measure the movement of desire across distance, and the manner in which books, letters, telegrams, and other written, printed, or electronic communications might both produce and mediate that distance.

A 2005 Guggenheim Fellow, Gatten’s films have received over 120 international solo exhibitions, and screened in over 1100 film festivals and group shows around the world. A 2010 Film Comment critics’ poll of artists cinema in the 21st c. placed Gatten within the top ten filmmakers, and included three of his films in a list of the fifty best individual works of the decade. In 2021 The Extravagant Shadows was named the “Best Experimental Feature Film of the Decade 2011-2020” in the journal Senses of Cinema.

His films have been included twice in the Whitney Biennial (2002, 2006), as well as in the exhibition “The American Century: Art & Culture, 1900-2000” at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His most recent feature-length work premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC in 2021.

Since 2012 major retrospectives of Gatten’s films have been mounted by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; SF MoMA; Wexner Center for the Arts; Los Angeles Film Forum; Harvard Film Archive; Austrian Film Museum; Nation Film Archive of the Czech Republic, Prague; Irish Film Institute, Dublin; Festival International de Cine de Gijon, Spain; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; La Région Central, Santiago, Chile, and a number of universities in North America and Europe.

Significant recent screenings include festivals in London, Toronto, Rotterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Bangkok, Tokyo, and exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London; ICA-London; Cinémathèque Française, Paris; Anthology Film Archives, Gladstone Gallery, and Exit Art, NYC; Pierogi, Brooklyn; Paul Young Projects, LA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Gatten’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), British Film Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, Austrian Film Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Cinémathèque Française, Harvard Film Archive, as well as in a variety of public and private collections.