Stan Brakhage is one of the most influential filmmakers in American avant-garde cinema, known for his fearless social commentary and technical innovations. During his nearly forty-year career, he made more than two hundred films of varying lengths. Brakhage’s films seek to encourage viewers to ignore traditional narrative structure in favour of pure visual perception and a visceral experience.

Strongly inspired by the paintings of Gunter Forg, the hand-painted work Dark Night of The Soul depicts a dark brown wall, littered with yellowed images of other interiors, next to multicoloured holes that offer a glimpse of the outside world behind the shifting facade. The openings in the wall become larger and then smaller again, so small that they sometimes resemble stars. Eventually, the enlargements take over the scene and destroy any sense of ‘wall’.