Van McElwee
Tetrahedra
13 November 2026 – 16 January 2027
Digital Media Room
Opening reception: Friday, 13 November
Bruno David is pleased to present Tetrahedra, a new work by St. Louis-based artist Van McElwee. This is McElwee’s seventh exhibition at Bruno David Gallery. The exhibition opens with a public reception on Friday, November 13, 2026, and remains on view through January 16, 2027, at the gallery’s main space on Forsyth Boulevard, downtown Clayton, MO.
Through a fusion of drawings, video, and audio, Tetrahedra explores time, space, and dimensionality by transforming a primal form into entirely new sights and sounds. “An alchemy occurs when the outer world is transformed into video: it becomes mind-stuff,” says McElwee. “I carry this process forward, questioning the nature of reality by weaving fragments of the world into entirely new patterns.”
McElwee’s body of media art includes over one hundred single channel video works, installations and web projects. Grants and awards include The American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award, The National Endowment for the Arts Independent Production Fund (seven-time recipient), a Regional Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, and a travel grant from the Government of India. McElwee’s work has been exhibited extensively worldwide and is represented in The Kitchen Video Collection in New York, Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, Heure Exquise! in France, UK and the Inter Media Art Institute in Germany, and LUX in the UK. McElwee is a Guggenheim fellow and Professor Emeritus at Webster University’s School of Communication.
Van McElwee received his MFA in Multimedia in 1978 from Washington University School of Art and his BFA in Printmaking in 1973 from Memphis College of Art. He is Professor-Emeritus of Electronic and Photographic Media at Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Quotes about Van McElwee’s practice:
“McElwee is an ultra-prolific digital pioneer of the highest order. With each new piece he finds yet another way to invade his software and create images that previously could not have been conceived much less seen.”
— Andrew Lampert, Anthology Film Archives, New York
“The expansion of consciousness, the creation of timelessness and the generation of new worlds embody beauty without boundaries in Van McElwee’s work.”
— TL Reid, Afterimage
“As gorgeous as any fireworks display…dazzling astral patterns.”
— Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“It can be argued that McElwee’s Liquid Crystal simulates a new reality conducive to human survivability in the hypermodern age.”
— Robert Kohn, Afterimage
“An artful magician of time and space.”
— Ann-Sargent Wooster
“Van McElwee draws us into a world of flux, a world which consists only of incessant transition, and dares us to feel at home in the exhilaration of this shifting universe.”
— David Finkelstein, Film Threat
STILLS
Van McElwee, Tetrahedra, 2026. Video, 2:46 min. Stills.
PUBLICATIONS