Paul Sharits

American avant-garde/experimental filmmaker, artist, and professor of media studies, Paul Sharits is widely known for his structural films, the use of multiple projectors, infinite film loops, experimental soundtracks, and interventions at the level of the filmstrip in order to realize his elemental mode of cinematic presentation. He has made a number of "flicker" films such as Ray Gun Virus, Piece Mandala/End War, N:O:T:H:I:N:G, T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, and S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED.

Trained initially as a painter, and a prolific theoretical writer, Sharits' art-making was wide-ranging, evidenced by his early involvement with Fluxus artists in New York. While studying a BFA in Fine Arts at the University of Denver, he began a mentorship with Stan Brakhage that soon became a lifelong friendship. Brakhage's manipulation of film structure through experimental and “scratch” film's influence is evident in the filmmaker's early work. He earned an MFA in Visual Design from Indiana University in Bloomington.

He taught at The Maryland Art Institute, later helped develop the Center for Media Studies at Antioch College, Ohio. Eventually, he taught at the State University of New York, Buffalo along with Tony Conrad and Hollis Frampton.

Paul Sharits enjoyed relative acknowledgement during his lifetime, with shows at the Bykert Gallery (NYC), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY), and Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) among other institutions, and has been posthumously exhibited at the Whitney Museum and the MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre in Paris, and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY. The Greene Naftali Gallery exhibition of both his works on paper and his four projector installation “Shutter Interface” was nominated for “Solo Exhibition of the Year” at the 2009 First Annual Art Awards at the NYC Guggenheim Museum.