The gallery of moving images: when film becomes fine art

Step into a contemporary art gallery and the experience may feel less like browsing paintings and more like entering a cinema. Only here, there is no ticket stub, no rows of seats and no requirement to stay until the end credits roll. Instead, moving images ripple across walls, spill into corners and overlap in ways that blur the boundary between film and visual art.

Video art and film installations are changing the way audiences engage with time-based media. Where a traditional film has a clear beginning and end, these works allow visitors to walk in midway, choose how long to linger, and even position themselves within the artwork. A gallery becomes an editing suite, and the act of viewing becomes part of the performance.

Photo of blockbuster movie posters by Samuel Regan-Asante

Artists who shaped the medium

Few artists embody this crossover better than Stan Douglas of Vancouver. His 1992 work Hors-champs, first exhibited at Documenta, is often cited as a milestone in multi-channel video installation. By combining live jazz performance with the visual strategies of film and documentary, Douglas created a piece that demanded to be experienced as both cinema and art object.

Three decades later, Douglas continues to push the form. At the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, he presented ISDN, which paired UK grime with Egyptian Mahraganat across two screens, immersing viewers in the sound and rhythm of global protest. In Canada, the National Gallery has exhibited his ambitious projects examining the 2011 protest movements, a reminder of how film can serve as both social document and conceptual artwork.

Isaac Julien has taken the moving image into even larger spaces. His celebrated installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010) spreads across nine double-sided screens, surrounding audiences with imagery of migration, folklore and performance. When it was shown in The Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Marron Atrium, visitors described walking through the work as if they were moving inside a cinematic dream, with sound and images shifting around them at every turn.

Shirin Neshat, meanwhile, has used dual projections to powerful effect. Works such as Turbulent (1998) and Rapture (1999) place male and female performers on opposite screens, requiring viewers to turn back and forth. The result is not only a meditation on gender and cultural divisions but also an experiment in spectatorship itself: audiences become physically implicated in the split narratives she stages.

Vancouver as a hub

Vancouver has long supported experimental film as contemporary art. In 2019, the Polygon Gallery presented Christian Marclay’s The Clock, a 24-hour montage synchronized to real time. Audiences lined up at dawn, midnight and every hour in between to see famous scenes unfold at the precise minute they happened in real life. For many visitors, watching Jack Nicholson in The Shining scream “Here’s Johnny!” at exactly 11:15 p.m. was as thrilling as the movie itself.

Western Front, one of Canada’s longest-running artist-run centres, has been a consistent champion of media art since the 1970s. Recent shows, including Holly Márie Parnell’s Cirrus and Archie Barry’s Try Keeping an Open Channel, highlight how video continues to be a medium of experimentation and risk-taking. Cineworks, the city’s artist-run film society, nurtures filmmakers working with analog and experimental processes, offering both production facilities and exhibition space. The Contemporary Art Gallery, meanwhile, has staged multi-channel works such as Deanna Bowen’s A Harlem Nocturne, which combines film, photography and archival research.

Did you know?

Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho slows Hitchcock’s 1960 film to two frames per second, meaning it takes exactly one full day to play. You can literally watch time stretch before your eyes.

International landmarks

Globally, film installations have created defining moments in museum culture. Christian Marclay’s The Clock became a phenomenon when it toured internationally, winning the Golden Lion at Venice and drawing record crowds. Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho slowed Hitchcock’s classic to a crawl, turning a familiar thriller into an eerie sculptural experience. Pipilotti Rist’s Pour Your Body Out transformed MoMA’s atrium in 2008 with oversized projections of colour and movement, accompanied by ambient sound, while visitors relaxed on a giant circular sofa. And Bill Viola, often called the Rembrandt of the video age, established video art as a museum-worthy medium with large-scale, slow-motion works that invited contemplation rather than quick consumption.

Why it matters

Film in the gallery changes both art and cinema. Duration becomes material to be sculpted. Architecture becomes part of the composition. Spectatorship becomes active, not passive. Rather than following a story from start to finish, audiences navigate narratives physically, piecing together meaning through movement and choice.

In doing so, artists remind us that moving images are not only entertainment but also cultural memory, political commentary and sensory experience. A gallery visit can become an act of editing, collaboration and reflection all at once.

As Vancouver continues to grow as a hub for contemporary art, events like Art Downtown connect audiences with this evolving dialogue between film and visual art. Exploring moving images in galleries is not only about watching but also about participating in the story of art today.

by Preety Komal