Powerful Images of Fundamental Human Experience

For over 30 years, Bill Viola has been creating video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances and TV productions. He made a major contribution toward establishing video as a key medium of contemporary art, expanding its scope as regards technology, content and historical context. 

A shift to spiritual issues
Viola’s video installations immerse their viewers totally in worlds of images and sound. Using the most-advanced technology, this artist strives for perfection in precision and in the power of his imagery. Since the 1990s, Viola’s art has increasingly turned to examining universal human experience and spiritual questions. He explores the fundamental experiences of our existence such as birth, remembrance, death and awakening consciousness. In the 1970s, Viola pursued an interdisciplinary degree in the visual arts and in electronic music in Experimental Studios at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University in New York. He visited courses on Eastern philosophy, perceptual theories, physics, electronics, religion and mysticism—subjects that still influence his work today. The people in his artworks are faced with similar existential issues regardless of their cultural, historical or religious backgrounds.

An overview of the rich oeuvre of a conjuror of imagery
The Kunstmuseum Bern already purchased works by Bill Viola in the 1990s and thereby early established this pioneer of video art in its collection. The four artworks chosen for the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum—with one to two video projections per room distributed throughout building—reveal Bill Viola’s investigations of the phenomena of sense perception and how they are involved in human processes of self-awareness. The Cathedral of Berne features five recent works by this veritable conjuror of images, addressing subjects such as cleansing and purification, transformation, suffering and commiseration. The sum of both exhibition sites gives a rounded view of both Bill Viola’s stylistic development as well as the shift in the focus of his content, while offering an overview of the comprehensive oeuvre of this outstanding American artist.

Tradition and the present in a powerful dialogue
With his video art, Viola takes his place in a long tradition of figural representation and existential subject matter in art. Bill Viola’s lyrical video screenings partake in a dialogue with the representation of the Christian subject matter of suffering and the Passion in the glass-window painting and sculptures of the awe-inspiring surroundings of the Cathedral of Berne. Much of the older art is very hard for many of us to comprehend today. The exhibition title Passions refers not only to the time of the Passiontide, when the exhibition will be opening its doors to the public, but also to the Passion as the prototypical Christian experience and the fact that above all humanity finds its expression in dealing with suffering and misfortune. But Viola does not just tackle purely Christian themes. He equally addresses worldly experiences and occurrences, giving us a deeper insight into life and humanity in the juxtaposition with traditional Christian art—and within the religious context of the Cathedral of Berne. Viola thus makes tradition comprehensible again to the contemporary viewing public, breathing fresh life into it with his new narratives.

Contact person: Brigit Bucher, , Tel.: +41 31 328 09 21
Images: Marie Louise Suter, , Tel.: +41 31 328 09 53

Images & Documentations