Ancient of Days is a remarkable series of "canons and fugues for video" that comprises Viola's most sophisticated structural and metaphorical explorations of time. Mathematical notations of precise time-code editing were applied to construct illustrations of temporal symmetry, duality and...
This work represents the inevitable separation of father and son as they take separate paths in their life's journey. Two men arrive in the desert under a turbulent sky. They appear at the far extremes of the frame and walk toward us on a trajectory that takes them closer to each other, until they...
“Transfiguration refers to a rare process whereby both the substance and essence of an entity is reconfigured. In physical terms, a transfiguration is a change in form, a remodeling of appearance. The word derives from the ancient Greek ‘metemorphothe’ or 'metamorphosis,’ suggesting a...
Silent Life records the first hours and days of life through a series of portraits of newborn babies in a hospital nursery. The alienating hospital environment, and the vulnerability of the babies' gestures and expressions, suggests a primal linking of birth and death.
The Space Between the Teeth is based on the structure of acoustic phenomena and the psychological dynamics of a man screaming at the end of a long dark corridor. With each successive scream, the camera point of view hurtles at high velocity along the length of the hallway in decreasing increments....
Using a camera moving along a predetermined path to create the effect of a simulated zoom, Sweet Light refers to the seduction of illumination, focusing on the phototropic vision of a moth. Writes Viola, "A moth emerges from a discarded letter as the spirit of a dead thought and — after an...
The hands of three generations are seen in this work – a young boy, father, mother and grandmother. Slowly and deliberately, the four pairs of hands are shown forming a series of predetermined movements. These are taken from sources as diverse as Buddhist mudras (defined ritual or symbolic...
Offering a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the work documents a succession of people slowly emerging out of darkness and moving into the light, where Viola's figures are like those of a modern day Orpheus.
Migration is an analysis of an image, a metaphorical exercise in perception and representation, illusion and reality, microcosm and macrocosm, nature and consciousness.
A four-hour plus video production inspired by Richard Wagner's oeuvre "Tristan und Isolde" and projected during the opera premiere in Paris, in partnership with Peter Sellars as artistic collaborator, and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The video installation's alternation between slow and fast-moving images, as well as soft and loud sounds, represents faltering thought processes. A murmuring voice illustrates the installation's effect on the viewer's mind.
Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of a natural force. The experiences of the four individuals are orchestrated together to form a coherent whole. The overriding theme is martyrdom for...
Playing Soul Music to My Freckles is a minimalist performance in which a bare loudspeaker, playing an Aretha Franklin song, is seen on the artist's exposed back.
The fourth video in the five-part digital-image cycle project "Going Forth By Day" (2002), "The Voyage" features an elderly man who is dying, surrounded by his family, as a boat below filled with his possessions awaits him.
Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of a natural force. The experiences of the four individuals are orchestrated together to form a coherent whole. The overriding theme is martyrdom for...
Songs of Innocence, which directly references the visionary Romanticism of William Blake, is haunted with symbolic transformations, as shifting light is charted through the passage of a day. Images of children singing on a school lawn dissolve and reappear, hovering at the edge of perception,...
Red Tape -- Collected Works Bill Viola 1975, 30 min, color, sound Playing Soul Music to My Freckles 1975, 2:46 min, color, sound A Non-Dairy Creamer 1975, 5:19 min, color, sound The Semi-Circular Canals 1975, 8:51 min, color, sound A Million Other Things (2) 1975, 4:35 min, color, sound ...
Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of a natural force. The experiences of the four individuals are orchestrated together to form a coherent whole. The overriding theme, is martyrdom for...
