Artist in Person To view local filmmaker Scott Stark's work is toengage in a particularly satisfying type of pleasure, one that involvesour perceptual and cultural knowledge but raises the possibility ofmisrecognition. Deceptively simple, his images resonate complexly.Tender Duplicity (1992, 40 mins, Color, 16mm), a recent major work,attempts to find a means of speaking about the political and socialcontext of war without using words. Stark draws on loaded visual imagessuch as the flag, a yellow ribbon, an emergency cone, and places thesesigns containing cultural information into simple, revealing contexts.Often the object fills the frame, literally obscuring the worldsurrounding it and suggesting both the power and poverty of iconography.The cost of "normalizing" war is metaphorically suggested bygraphic photos of deformed mouths. Unauthorized Access (1993, c.30 mins,Color, 3/4" video) is a delightfully subversive video about urbanlandscape, a quest for panoramic views in a time of increasinglyrestricted access. Stark's short portrait film, Acceleration (1993, c.7mins, Color, Super-8mm), beautifully and hauntingly rediscovers thepower of the image to capture a soul. Paradoxically, these portraits ofanonymous, disembodied faces are possible only in the modern age.--Kathy Geritz