Bill Viola
Bill Viola was considered one of the most important artists of his generation. Was an American video artist whose artistic expression depended upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death, and aspects of consciousness.
Viola´s art deals largely with the central themes of human consciousness and experiences -birth, death, love, emption, and a kind of humanist spirituality. Throughout his career he drew meaning and inspiration from his deep interest in mystical traditions, especially Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism, and Islamic Sufism, often evident in the transcendental quality of some of his works. Equally, the subject matter of manner of western medieval and renaissance devotional art informed his aesthetic.
He often explored dualism, or the idea that comprehension of a subject is impossible unless its opposite is known. For example, a lot of his work has theme such as life and death, light and dark, fire and water, stressed and calm, or loud and quiet.
His work can be divided into three types, conceptual, visual, and a unique combination of the two. Violas work often exhibits a painterly quality, with his use of ultra-slow motion video encouraging the viewer to sink into the image and connect deeply to the meanings contained within it. This quality makes his work perhaps unusually accesible within a contemporary art context. As a consequence, his work often receives mixed reviews from critics, some of whom have noted a tendency toward grandiosity and obviousness in some of his work.
Viola´s interest in capturing the essence of emotion through recording of its extreme display began al least as early as his 1976 work, The space Between the Teeth, a video of himself screaming and continued with such works as the 45-second Silent Mountain (2001) which shows two actors in states of anguish, which Viola described as probably the loudest scream I’ve recorded.
If Viola’s depictions of emotional states with no objective correlative- emotional states for which the viewer has no external object or event to understand them by- are one feature of many of his works, another, which has come to the forefront, is his reference to medieval and classical depictions of emotion.
Viola felt as if there are three different structures to describe patterns of data structures . There is the branching structure, matrix structure and schizo structure.
The Branching structure, the viewer process form the top to the bottom in time. The branching structure of presenting data is the typical narrative and linear structure.
The second structure is the Matrix structure, describes media when it follows nonlinear progression through information. The viewer could enter at any point, move in any direction, at any speed, pop in and out at any place. Like the branching structure , this is also has its set perimeters. However, the exact path that is followed is up to the user. The user has the option of participating in decision-making that affect the viewing experiences of the media.
The last structure is called the Schizo, or the Spaghetti model. This form of data structure pertains to pure or mostly randomness. Everything is irrelevant and significant at the same time. Viewers may become lost in this structure and never find their way out.
Viola has been called a Rembrandt of the video age, and a hi-techo- Caravaggio. Like the Old Masters, Viola is interested in how the aesthetics of his art can create profound emotional experiences. A pioneer of his medium, Viola has spent 40 years developing ways to make video works of overwhelming scale, technical skill and affective intimacy. Arriving at Syracuse University’s art school in 1969 he first studied commercial art and experimented music, but was soon tempted by the first portable, amateur video cameras that were arriving on the US market. Since then, his career has risen as quickly as videos ever evolving tools. He represented the United States at the 1995 Venice Biennale, and his artworks have been credited with offering the public a kind of bridge into cutting-edge video art.
People say ´oh it’s a video ´or ´oh it’s´ a plasma , but what I work with is light, he says. You might get a sense of what while staring up at the glistering cascade of water in a six-metre-high projection like Tristan’s Ascension.
So, what is it that’s video central to Viola’s practice? Moving images take time, and that is what I can give to the viewer ; time for reflection and most importantly, for self reflection. The artist´s interest in spirituality is really an interest in how we understand ourselves, and he has made video a useful tool in that pursuit.
Viola´s art is filled with earth, wind, fire and water - the four elements that ancient Greeks believed make up everything else known to humankind. Viola’s says he’s also interested in the physical possibilities of these elements - particularly fire and water- their destructive aspects—-their cathartic, purifying, transformative and regenerative capacities.
His videos often focus on a singular body in a particular , extreme state- swimming, drowning, searching, dreaming, floating, gasping, breathing, giving birth, being born or dying. Viola is interested in the relationship between the physical body and the soul, and how expressive bodies can convey inner spiritual states.
The bodies in his works mostly belong to performers- who act as stand -ins for all of us- although they aren’t always preforming. Viola talks to those he’s enlisted about their deep personal experiences, but often doesn’t give an exact run-down of what will happen dating the shoot, so many of the intimate close-ups you see projected in his installations are genuine emotional and physical reactions. The musician Weba Garrenton had appeared in Viola’s works for nearly a decade, but she still found that the water cascading over her in The return (2007) , was a purification that helped her through grief for her mother’s recent death. As Viola says, he wants his performances and his viewers to have an experience in the present tense.
Nely L. Friedrich
15-07-24
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