LONDON.- Richard Saltoun Gallery announces an expanded cinema experience by film pioneer Malcolm Le Grice, considered one of the most influential British experimental filmmakers.

Forty years ago Malcolm Le Grice's seminal film exhibition opened at the legendary Arts Lab Drury Lane (London) and then at the Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne). For the young filmmaker this marked a turning point in his career: forty years on a presentation encompassing the last fifty years of his work at Richard Saltoun Gallery marks another - the first solo exhibition of his work in a commercial gallery. Including new and newly worked films and installations, Le Grice has titled the exhibition 'No Idea', intentionally refusing to create an exhibition 'concept'.

Le Grice's early multi-screen and multi-media works took as a nexus the moving image: combining film with performance and installations that comprise both found and made objects. Moving away from the 2-dimensional screen and picture plane he destroyed the limits of the gallery space, forcing his audience to reconsider their own physical relation to the screen and thereby the viewing experience. This new method of inquiry was revolutionary and the term "expanded cinema" was quickly adopted in reference to it.

The developing phenomena of film and digital technology forced artists to reconsider and reinvent their art practice and Le Grice was at the forefront of this. Taking as a starting point one of his earliest films and installations, Castle (1964), the exhibition will develop a lineage of film history related to his practice, culminating in a screening of his most recent work Where, When (2015): a film that requires the audience's direct participation through the wearing of 3d glasses. A 'visual diary' of Le Grice's own experiences and memories, this film articulates an important part of his practice: the use of superimposed images and collage, whether in the 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional form. Exhibited alongside these works and films, will be a new wall based photo assemblage of his most famous work and first ever 16mm colour film, Berlin Horse (1970). Originally exhibited in 1973 in Filmaktion, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, this film, with accompanying soundtrack by Brian Eno, has been exhibited extensively worldwide, including most recently at Tate Modern as part of the exhibition Filmaktion (2012).

The history of film is a non-linear history, both horizontal and vertical, and this exhibition explores the work of this leading avant-grade filmmaker and artist as one of its leading proponents and history-maker.

Malcolm Le Grice studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art (graduating in 1965) and began to make film, video and computer works in the mid-60s. He has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the USA and his work has been screened in many exhibitions and film festivals including: Paris Biennale No.8 (Paris, 1973), Arte Inglese Oggi (Milan, 1976), Une Histoire du Cinema (Paris, 1976); Documenta 6 (Kassel, 1977); X-Screen at the MUMOK, (Vienna, 2004); Behind the Facts. Interfunktionen 1968-1975 (Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2004; touring to: Serralves, Porto, and Friedericianum, Kassel); Le Temps des Images, Espace Multimedia Gartner (Bourgogne, 2011); Performa13 (New York, 2013). Screenings have been held at Museum of Modern Art, New York; Louvre, Paris; Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London. A number of longer films have been broadcast on British TV.

Le Grice, together with David Curtis, founded the production workshop of The London Film Makers Cooperative in 1968 in response to a lack of support towards experimental filmmaking. With distribution, production and a cinema, the Co-op was dedicated to the development and promotion of underground, avant-garde cinema and was a magnet for experimental filmmakers at that time in Europe, supporting young artists such as Peter Gidal.

Out of the Co-Op emerged a group of radical, experimental performance artists and filmmakers, active in the early 70s under the name Filmaktion: Le Grice was one of its core members. Gallery House, London, and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, became the primary sites for their events, where the artists would actively perform during film screenings, transforming them into ‘live events’. This created a sensorial interaction between the viewers and the film.

Le Grice has written important critical and theoretical texts, including Abstract Film and Beyond (Studio Vista and MIT, 1977), Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age (British Film Institute, 2001). An extensive book was published on his work in 2015: Le Temps des images (Les Presses du Réel).

Le Grice is a Professor Emeritus of the University of the Arts in London, where he co-directed, together with David Curtis, the British Artists Film and Video Study Collection.