SAN JOSE, CA.- From June 1 – August 11, 2007, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art ( ICA ) will showcase The Kiss, a video installation by John Slepian in the gallery’s 560 South First Street window. The Kiss is part of the ICA ’s “Night Moves” installation series, an innovative program that gives the ICA a nighttime presence and animates the downtown cultural landscape by showcasing after-dark programming in the gallery’s windows.

The Kiss consists of two monitors depicting two forms that are trying against all odds to kiss each other. For more than five years John Slepian has created digitally generated photographs, video installations, and interactive computer installations that investigate what it is that makes us feel human—something, according to Slepian, that is becoming harder and harder to delineate in this world of rapidly advancing, and often shifting technologies. His works depict organic forms that are apparently derived from the human body. Though enormously simplified, they exhibit identifiable gestures and behaviors. As Slepian explains, “They are intended to elicit an awareness of the disjunctions that can occur between one’s emotional and intellectual reactions, and thereby provoke in the viewer a consideration of the process through which we come to identify with the objects of our gaze.”