Hitherto, people confronted by "video art" would mentally steel themselves to be bored by an alienating experience that excluded rather than included. This is the reason why an artist such as Pipilotta Rist, originally a rock-video director, has gained such enormous popularity for being the easy and exuberant progenitor of a difficult medium. Rist takes us to the cutting edge of ironic (rock) heaven. She has been eagerly adopted as an art star as she demonstrates that the medium is not for otaku only.
Rist, however, will forever be tainted by what she has appropriated to give her work the appearance of "complexity." Gary Hill, however, is a genius and the difference is clear. One of the most successful video artists living today, he has only one equal and contemporary, fellow American Bill Viola.
No amount of words can describe the simplicity or true complexity of Hill's oeuvre, which is laden with inquiry, as haunting and mysterious as Rembrandt's work. While Hill struggles against a prevailing lack of conviction in everything, he is not a cynical critic, but a philosopher who wants something more, seeking connections and the essence between things.