Etiqueta: Bill Viola

«In this installation Bill Viola is concerned with making the spectator aware of the connections between body and mind, contemplation and action, inner and outer reality. Creating a space with very distinct inner and outer aspects, he establishes a threshold sitzation, in which the moment of crossing from one symbolic reality into another becomes the central event in the spectator‘s experience and the principal object of his consciousness. […] The spectator has to pass through the silent, but optically very ‹loud› electronic flow of data, in order to reach a dark space. Here, he will find himself confronted by the vast, blurred images of the heads and upper torsos of three sleeping figures, projected on to three of the inner walls. […] As the spectator observes the sleepers‘ deep self-absorption, he is drawn toward a state of meditative immersion in his own being. The threshold between outer and inner contemplation is thus crossed, and this passage is both enacted and comprehended in a consummately spatial form. […] Both realms are ubiquitous in their own way; and, for Bill Viola, each is also, in the truest sense of the word, the vanishing point of a metapysical horizon.»

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Since the early 1970s, Bill Viola has created video installations that explore degrees of human consciousness, the body, and time. His video installation The Sleepers consists of seven metal barrels filled with water. At the bottom of each barrel, a monitor plays a 30-minute video loop of a different person’s sleeping face seen in close-up, filmed in real time. Only the light of the black and white monitors fills the exhibition space, producing a peaceful, inviting blue glow, and a dream-like atmosphere conducive to meditation. As viewers witness the sometimes fitful, sometimes peaceful sleep of these strangers—including one entering his “final sleep”—they are confronted with a familiar yet troubling image, and invited to contemplate their own fragility and finiteness.

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