Bill Viola

A small crowd of people are gathered in wait when they are suddenly struck by a massive onslaught of water.

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces.

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.

Viola's seminal piece, The Reflecting Pool, was made three decades ago on analogue video tape and yet could easily pass for a contemporary digital piece; in it, Viola emerges as central protagonist from a thick forest into a clearing filled by an artificial pool. As the noise of an aeroplane slowly passes and fades overhead, Viola approaches the edge of the pool, whereby he removes his shoes, squats down yelling and then prepares to make a powerful jump.

One of Paik’s most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II’s most devastating battles.

Seven vertically mounted screens show seven fully clothed submerged people of different ages, genders and ethnicities floating beneath the surface of a river or lake.

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 deep-seated beliefs, with the physical suffering of the body made dramatically evident through the cardinal elements

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.

"I Do Not Know What It Is that I Am Like" juxtaposes images of animals, both wild and domestic, and natural environments with human activity as it takes place in an apartment, and during a fire walking ceremony in Fiji. Documentary-style footage is combined with staged events. Despite the piece's lack of a traditional narrative, it bears some relationship to nature works. The segment features material from "Il Corpo Scuro (The dark body)" - animals and natural environments are seen up close and at a distance.

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. The corridor and the cinematic structuring of the camera's advance act as metaphors for passage and transition between two worlds, bridged by the individual's cathartic screams. Ultimately, the image of the man at the end of the corridor is transformed into a Polaroid still that is literally washed away.

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern, a contemporary music group based in Frankfurt, commissioned Viola to create a visual score for Varèse's Déserts after discovering notes by the composer referring to an unrealized image component of his composition. The resulting film/videotape was produced with the European television stations ZDF/Arte. In October 1994 Viola's Déserts premiered in a live performance in Vienna with conductor Peter Eötvös and the Ensemble Modern.

This diptych opens with the image of two parallel streams of falling water. A female torso moves into the background of the left screen while a male torso mirrors her on the right. Both figures move slowly to the foreground and into the light, cupping and bathing their hands in the water for several minutes until they fade away into silhouettes. Viola has described this work as a kind of purification ceremony akin to those one would experience in a Japanese Zen temple.

American video artist Bill Viola explores the life cycle as an enveloping whole instead of the hegemonic view of life as a linear progression. The artist considers human beings' existence on earth as a cycle where the beginning and end may be the same. Projected onto a screen more than seven meters high anchored to the floor, "Inverted Birth" depicts five stages of human awakening through a series of violent transformations.

The Sleepers is a startlingly dark vision of sleeping people suspended under water, unable to make contact with the world outside. Viola describes the work: “Seven 55-gallon metal barrels stand in a darkened room. They are white inside and out and are open at the top. The only light in the room is a soft bluish glow emerging from each barrel and diffused throughout the room. The barrels are filled to the brim with water. At the bottom of each one under the water is a black-and-white video monitor facing straight up, the source of the blue light. Video and power cables for the monitor are visible as they emerge from the floor and enter the water over the top rim of each barrel. On each screen is a close-up of a person’s face while asleep. There is an image of a different person in each barrel, actual recordings of people sleeping presented continuously with little or no editing.

In this work's left panel, The Crossing (1996), a walking male figure is consumed by fire on a 27-foot vertical plasma screen projection while in the accompanying right panel, The Crossing, Video 2 (1996), the same man struggles under a deluge of water.

Created by Bill Viola and Kira Perov and opened in May 2014, Martyrs shows four individuals, across four colour vertical plasma screens, being martyred by the four classical elements. The work has no sound. It lasts for seven minutes. Martyrs was joined in 2016 by a second piece entitled Mary. The installations have been gifted to Tate, and are on long-term loan to St Paul’s Cathedral. Bill Viola's commission for St Paul’s Cathedral follows the great historical tradition of commissions for spiritual centres that has resulted in a priceless heritage of art around the world. The result of this commission sees St Paul’s Cathedral, which has always spearheaded the engagement of great artists, house a resonant work of art for our times. Martyrs (and later Mary), will play an important role in connecting contemporary issues with the timeless themes embodied in the cathedral.

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 deep-seated beliefs, with the physical suffering of the body made dramatically evident through the cardinal element

The film is a five-part projection-based installation, which addresses the complexity of human existence through the themes of individuality, society, death and rebirth. Each video is projected directly onto the wall of the exhibition space, just as paint from a fresco adheres to the surface of a plaster wall.

2005. Video/sound installation. Performer: Robin Bonaccorsi.

Driven by a quest to capture a landscape reduced to flatness and sky, Viola travels to Chott El-Djerid. The film opens with images of snowy prairies and winter scenes, mirrored by warm, vibrating desert vistas. Through powerful telephoto lenses, shimmering mirages and warped forms emerge under extreme heat and light. These visuals evoke a space where dream and waking reality merge. Viola’s journey transcends documentation, transforming viewing into a reflective exploration of the limits of perception.

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 transposition — time-based equivalents of musical compositional principles such as counterpoint and serialism. Astonishing temporal interventions — a 180-degree pan gazing downward on a New York City street that progresses from day to night, an image of Mount Rainier in which the foreground and background unfold in different time planes — unfold as symbolic transformations of natural and urban landscapes.

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 are walking side by side. Eventually they cross paths and begin to separate. The gap between them widens until they leave the outer edges of the frame.

The sculptural video installation consists of nine scrims suspended parallel to one another. Projectors at either end of the row of scrims show images of a man and a woman walking towards each other, crossing in the center and moving apart.