Beryl Korot

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),[5] Documenta 6 (1977), and the Whitney Museum (1980 and 2002), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2010), Tate Modern (2013), Museum of Modern Art (2017–18), ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2018), amongst others. Dachau 1974 is a four-channel video work, consisting of footage taken in 1974 at the former concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. The recordings focus on the symmetry of the architecture and the present ambiance of the space. Taking inspiration from the technology of the loom, Korot combined her many separate elements (in this case video footage) to develop a work in which paired channels (1 and 3; 2 and 4) conceived as threads bind the non-verbal narrative work as it proceeds in time.[6]

Text and Commentary consists of five video channels on five monitors that Korot recorded from a variety of perspectives as she wove. The five videos depicting the artist working at a loom appear directly across from the resulting tapestries, which are suspended from the ceiling.[1] The viewer experiences the work while seated on a bench between the woven text of the textiles and the video commentary. The installation includes Korot's drawings and pictographic scores, which are the basis for both the textile production and video editing. The work explores the non-decorative meaning and numerical basis of abstract patterns, with Korot understanding the loom and its use of punch cards, to be an early form of communication technology.[7] Traditionally, both weaving and computing have been understood as women's professions, but Korot examines both from a feminist perspective, moving beyond associations with both domesticity and femininity to place textile art within a canon of fine art.[8] The installation was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.[9]

Dachau 1974 is in the Kramlich Collection as well as the collection of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.[10][11] Her painted text-based handwoven canvases in an original language were exhibited in 1986 at the John Weber Gallery and in the Carnegie Museum of Art's 1991 exhibition Points of Departure: Origins in Video, in 2018 at bitforms gallery, and in 2023 in at LACMA's exhibition Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952-82, amongst others.

Two video/music collaborations with Steve Reich (The Cave, 1993, and Three Tales, 2002) brought video installation art into a theatrical context and have been performed worldwide since 1993 to the present (2023). Apart from performances, the works have been installed at venues such as the Whitney Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and ZKM.

Korot and Reich both participated in a collaborative interview with writer Jonathan Cott. The article was titled "Modern Folk Tales and Ancient Stories: a Conversation with Beryl Korot and Steve Reich".[12]

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 in Fall 2011, and at bitforms gallery in Spring 2012, among others.

Korot also authored a piece that explained the development of her many art and video installations and the thoughts behind them, entitled "Language as Still Life: From Video to Painting."[13]

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).[14]

Korot has been married to composer Steve Reich since 1976. They have one son.[15]