Interplay
Sept. 19 - Nov. 1, 2025
Galerie And
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Opening
September 19, 6-9 pm
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Screening
Saturday, October 25, 4 pm
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Artist Talk
Sunday, October 26, 4 pm EST/10 pm CEST
Online, RSVP here
This exhibition presents a selection of video works by Alan Callander, whose 25-year practice involves the digital transformation of live footage into compositions that oscillate between figuration and abstraction. Callander’s process unfolds in stages: from raw video material, he creates discrete vignettes—often no more than a few minutes in length—which function as compressed visual scenes. These are then woven into longer-form sequences, forming what the artist refers to as “abstract narratives”: loosely structured, rhythmically evolving video works where recurring motifs echo, transform, and reappear across time.
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Early works depict queer intimacy, the eroticism of youth, and the aesthetics of subcultural spaces—beaches, nightclubs, bedrooms—filtered through a visual language indebted to early analog video experimentation. In 2008, following his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, Callander’s imagery began to shift: neurological scans, interior bodily landscapes, and altered rhythms emerged alongside a growing concern with vulnerability, fragmentation, and the shifting conditions of embodiment. More recent works revisit questions of sexuality through the lens of aging and illness, without relinquishing the ecstatic, layered aesthetic that defines his visual vocabulary.
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Presented as a three-channel projection across the interior walls of Galerie And’s Friedrichshain space, the exhibition draws out visual and thematic resonances across works from different periods. The installation—visible both from within the gallery and from the street through its transparent glass façade—creates a choreographed environment in which images loop, delay, and overlap across screens. An original electronic soundtrack composed by the artist provides sonic cohesion.
Curator's Essay
Alan Callander
Alan Callander is a Washington, DC–based new media artist and arts educator whose work employs abstract imagery and sound to explore themes of disability, sexuality, loss, and hope. His audio/video installations—ranging from intimate to large-scale—translate physical and emotional experiences into compelling abstract narratives through form, color, and movement. Using cinematic conventions, digital illustration, and animation, he makes the silent and invisible seen, heard, and felt.
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His recent time-based and 2D works focus on neurological signaling—the electrochemical and protein reactions that underlie sentience and shape our perception of the world. These projects illuminate how disease alters human sensation: “Just as in my body, my art often mirrors these same distortions between action and perception, between the literal and the abstract.” Earlier bodies of work confronted sexuality and sexual identity, engaging themes of sexual positivity, masculinity, and “otherness.” Across all of his practice, Callander seeks to evoke resonance with the pain, beauty, and wonder of human experience.
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Callander began making short films as a teenager, and his work has since been shown in film festivals and galleries worldwide—including venues in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and across the United States. His abstract audio/video project CF.01 received the Kraft Media Prize in the juried Colorfield Variations exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and was later shown in galleries throughout the U.S. and Europe.
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He holds an MFA in Photographic and Digital Media from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and an interdisciplinary BA in Multimedia: Design, Technology, and Development from American University in Washington D.C.
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