Bill Viola
dal 20/6/2006 al 1/9/2006
Segnalato da
20/6/2006
Bill Viola
Haunch of Venison Yard, London
"The Tristan Project" is a museum-scale exhibition showing across two venues and will present over ten new works. They range from room-sized video projections of image and sound to small, silent flat panel screens, and seek to deeply engage the viewer in a visceral and emotional experience that goes to the roots of the human condition, and its spiritual sources.
The Tristan Project
Bill Viola (born America, 1951) is internationally recognised as one of the world's
leading contemporary artists. For over 30 years he has been at the forefront of
developing the medium of video art, helping to establish it as an essential genre of
contemporary visual art. Viola has exhibited at museums worldwide, including the
National Gallery, London in 2003. Viola's work focuses on universal human
experiences, of birth, death and the unfolding of consciousness. While it often
draws on the conventions of Western art especially the Medieval and Renaissance
periods, the work is also informed by Viola's involvement with the spiritual
traditions of Zen Buddhism as well as his studies of Christian mysticism and
Islamic Sufism. Viola has expanded the content and historical reference points of
video art, while he has simultaneously explored the technological potentials of the
medium, breaking boundaries and pushing video to its limits.
The Tristan Project is a museum-scale exhibition showing across
two venues and will present over ten new works. Like Viola's previous works, they
range from room-sized video projections of image and sound to small, silent flat
panel screens, and seek to deeply engage the viewer in a visceral and emotional
experience that goes to the roots of the human condition, and its spiritual sources.
Most of the works in LOVE/DEATH: The Tristan Project arise from the hours of
material that Viola produced for a new production of Richard Wagner's nineteenth
century opera, Tristan und Isolde. A collaboration between Viola, theatre director
Peter Sellars, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and
Kira Perov, executive director of the Bill Viola Studio, the opera was first presented
in concert form in Los Angeles in December 2004, and received its fully staged
premier in Paris at the National Opera Bastille in April 2005. Rather than presenting
a narrative interpretation of the story, Viola's images, projected throughout the
entire four-hour performance, evoke a symbolic visual world that exists in parallel
to the worldly events unfolding on the stage. Viola has said: 'Tristan und Isolde is
the story of a love so intense and profound that it cannot be contained in the
material bodies of the lovers. In order to fully realise their love, Tristan and Isolde
must ultimately transcend life itself'. The works in the exhibition reflect different
stages in the lover's path towards death and liberation.
In Purification (2005), a man and a woman independently undertake the ritual
preparations for symbolic sacrifice required for their transformation and rebirth.
This process methodically unfolds in seven contiguous image sequences across a
time span of fifty minutes. The individual sections are: The Approach; The Arrival;
The Disrobing; Ablutions; Basin of Tears; The Dowsing; and Dissolution. The
images are projected side by side as a large diptych on two adjacent screens
mounted to the wall.
Lover's Path (2005), traces the journey of the lovers from their emergence out of
the subtle darkness of night to their arrival into the material light of day, and
dissolution. Two figures walk out of the undergrowth of a night forest and traverse
four distinct nocturnal environments. Along the way their bodies acquire an
increasing intensity of light that ultimately obliterates their features just before they
reach the sea at daybreak, where they disappear beneath the waves. The image
sequence is projected onto a hanging screen suspended from above and viewable
from both sides. Two channels of sound accompany the image.
Fire Woman (2005), is an image seen in the mind's eye of a dying man. According
to Viola: 'when the flames of passion and fever finally engulf the inner eye, when
the realisation that desire's body will never be met blinds the seer, the reflecting
surface is shattered and collapses into undulating wave patterns of pure light'. A
large projection installation on a vertical screen with five channels of sound, Fire
Woman opens with a darkened silhouette of a female figure standing before a wall
of flame. After several minutes, she moves forward, opens her arms, and falls into
her own reflection, disappearing beneath the surface of the image.
Viola received his BFA in Experimental Studies from Syracuse University in 1973,
and met Kira Perov, life-partner and long-term collaborator, in 1977. Since 1972 he
has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments,
electronic music performances, works for television broadcast, and his writings
have been widely published. He represented the U.S.A. at the 46th Venice Biennale
in 1995 and in 1997 the Whitney Museum of American Art organised Bill Viola: A
25-Year Survey, an exhibition that travelled to six museums across Europe and the
United States. His Passions exhibition organised by the J. Paul Getty Museum in
2003 travelled to major museums in Europe and Australia. Viola's works are in
collections worldwide including the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Collection, and the
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Bill Viola and Kira Perov live and work in Long
Beach, California with their two children.
LOVE/DEATH: The Tristan Project, will be
accompanied by a major new book with contributions from art historian, David
Anfam, art critic, Simon Grant and Bill Viola, and richly illustrated with photographs
of the works by Kira Perov. Viola will give a lecture on 16 June at Tate Modern.
For further information, and images please contact: Calum Sutton
Call +44 (0) 20 7495 5050 or email calum@haunchofvenison.com
The exhibition is showing at Haunch of Venison, London and the former St. Olave's
College, Tooley Street, by Tower Bridge Road, London, SE1 2JR. The nearest tube
station to Haunch of Venison is Bond Street, and to St. Olave's College is London
Bridge. These stations are connected by the Jubilee Line extension.
The production continues to tour, returning to Disney Hall in Los Angeles in April
2007, followed by performances in New York presented by the Lincoln Centre for
the Performing Arts. The video was collaboratively funded by L'Opera National de
Paris, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Lincoln Centre, Bill Viola Studio,
Haunch of Venison and James Cohan Gallery. Production: Kira Perov, executive
producer; S.Tobin Kirk, producer; Harry Dawson, director of photography; Lisa
Rhoden, Isolde (earthly body); Sarah Steben, Isolde (heavenly body); Jeff Mills,
Tristan (earthly body); John Hay, Tristan (heavenly body).
Haunch of Venison
6 Haunch of Venison Yard - London