Bill Viola

I’m not sure what I was expecting Bill Viola to look like but I was a little surprised to walk into the room with my fellow MoMA Junior Associates to find a thin, balding gray haired man with a mustache, beard and glasses standing front and center. Had he not referenced Zen Buddhism several times, I could have figured out his strong interest due to the prayer beads he wears around his wrist and neck. He began describing his thoughts on art in general and then talked about specific works. I have to say I could have listened to him for hours. He is deep and profound. For me it was like being back in college with Professor Carter in Religion/Philosophy 101.

He views art as the ability to get outside yourself by going inside oneself. He stated that the work of an artist is a transformation. During his year and a half in Japan he studied with a Zen Buddhist teacher who taught him to “stop thinking” because when you are empty, that is when you can do something. If you are full, that can’t happen. Half the work an artist creates has to be a gift from an unknown place and half comes from tapping into one’s talent. If an artist thinks a work will be great he/she is doomed.

Pneuma, 1994

A work entitled “Pneuma” is the anchor of the show at James Cohan Gallery. The ancient Greek word for breath, life force, spirit and soul, Viola uses “pneuma” to examine the flow through all living things on earth. He believes in the idea of the sacred in all things, even inanimate objects. The video was created in 1994 and Viola was never happy with the accompanying soundtrack, so he redid it for this show and now all of the other works in the exhibition connect to this central piece. In this work figures find their way through the darkness to get to the other side; they lose themselves in order to find themselves. He shot the work in his neighborhood and also in the desert using a surveillance camera from the 1970s. He often uses this camera for his projects because of the grainy low-resolution image it captures. That grainy quality is intensified when the lights are turned down and the camera strains to capture an image. Viola believes that it is when we strain to see that visions can happen. He feels that the information overload we experience today robs us of the ability to have a revelation.

Small Saints, 2008

His work Small Saints came out of  work he created for the 2007 Venice Biennale which I was lucky enough to see and even wrote about in a previous blog. In Venice, three video screens were placed in a 15th century chapel in the altar niches where paintings once hung. The videos consisted of a “water wall” that people would walk through. The water fell like a sheet of glass so you could see right through it. He used two cameras to shoot this work. As figures come toward the viewer the image is obscure and black and white. The viewer is unaware that water is even there. As figures slowly walk through the water and emerge on the other side, the image shifts to color. The black and white portions are shot with the 1970s camera and the color portions are shot with a camera that costs about $150,000. Viola discussed how he prefers the older camera; it has great sentimental value for him and he loves the quality of the film it produces. The two portions of the work come together to create a world in which the dead transition to the land of the living, but soon realize they can’t stay and have to go back.

The first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, that all life is changing and impermanent, plays an important part in the artist’s work. This is a theme that courses through every work I have ever seen by Bill Viola. I have always enjoyed his work but hearing him speak gave his videos a whole new depth and meaning. I look forward to seeing even more of his work in the future.