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.