Beryl Korot

Biography

Beryl Korot has pioneered the field of video art since the early 1970s. She was co-editor of Radical Software (1970), the first publication to discuss the possibilities of the new video medium, and Video Art (1976) with Ira Schneider. Her first multiple channel works (Dachau 1974 and Text and Commentary) were seen at such diverse venues as The Kitchen (1975), Leo Castelli Gallery (1977), Dokumenta 6 (1977), and the Whitney Museum (1980 and 2002), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2010) among others and explored the structural relationship between programming on the ancient technology of the loom and computer programming. Text and Commentary was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.

Dachau 1974 is in the Kramlich Collection. Her painted text-based handwoven canvases in an original language were exhibited in 1986 at the John Weber Gallery and in 1990 at the Carnegie Museum (Points of Departure). Two video/music collaborations with Steve Reich (The Cave, 1993, and Three Tales, 2002) brought video installation art into a theatrical context. Both works continue to be performed and have been installed, apart from live performances, at such venues as the Whitney Museum, the Carnegie Museum, the Reina Sofia, the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, and ZKM. Since 2003 she has been creating a new body of video and print work which was seen at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum for the first time, in Beryl Korot: Text/Weave/Line, Video 1977-2010, and subsequently at Dartmouth College Fall 2011 and bitforms gallery, Spring 2012, among others. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and has received numerous grants for her work from the NEA, NYSCA, and most recently from Anonymous Was a Woman (2008).

Korot has been married to composer Steve Reich since 1976. They have one son, Ezra Reich, born in 1978.

Works