Elixir of Light

Barry Gerson’ s ELIXIR OF LIGHT is a memoir of the artist’ s explorations into and breakthroughs with color LED therapy lights to heal the various maladies that accompany being human, including among others aging and chronic disease, combined with insights on his theories regarding the energy powers of light and intuition. The work fluctuates between hands-on experiments and the artist’ s gleanings about the nature of universe and its creation, with numerous biographical and poetic excursions. It is a penetrating examination of the artist’ s core beliefs about art and film-making and their underlying intimacy with and potential to deliver wisdom about our human condition. As Gerson writes, “ It has always been about the Light. Just as I have now found the Light to be about our healing.”

Barry Gerson is a noted experimental filmmaker whose work gained renown for exploring the spiritual elements of light starting in the 1960s. Those films, alongside his paintings with photo elements, sculptures and film/light boxes, have been shown in galleries and installations ever since, including several Whitney Museum of American Art biennials and retrospectives in major cinema centers and museums around the globe. Gerson has taught filmmaking at a number of key institutions including Rhode Island School of Design, The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College and SUNY-Buffalo. John G. Hanhardt is an American author, art historian, and curator of film and media arts. Hanhardt was the Consulting Senior Curator for Media Arts at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, where he developed exhibitions, collections, and archives in film and the media arts.