Pioneering video artist Invoice Viola died at age 73 at his residence in Lengthy Seashore, California, on Friday, July 12 after a prolonged battle with Alzheimer’s illness. His demise was confirmed by James Cohan, the artist’s representing gallery.
Viola is remembered for his contemplative video portraits, experimental soundscapes, and immersive new media installations that grapple with common human experiences of life, demise, and evolving consciousness. Over the course of his five-decade profession, Viola helped cement video as a up to date creative technique of expression by exploring the probabilities of picture and sound know-how by way of single-channel shows, particular results, and closed-circuit sculptural installations.
The artist was born on January 25, 1951 in Flushing, Queens, the place his dad and mom raised him alongside his older sister and youthful brother. A brush with demise on the age of six, when he virtually drowned earlier than being rescued by an uncle, profoundly influenced his outlook on life and his work. “I simply noticed essentially the most stunning imaginative and prescient of sunshine and shade,” Viola stated in a 2017 interview.
He typically alluded to this expertise in his follow, drawing from this reminiscence and religious traditions like Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism for works like his five-part video sequence The Reflecting Pool (1977–79), which challenges viewers’ understanding of time and consciousness by specializing in moments of transition, similar to day to nighttime or motion to stillness.
“I see that media know-how just isn’t at odds with our interior selves, however the truth is a mirrored image of it,” Viola stated in a 2007 lecture.
In 1973, Viola acquired a Bachelor of Positive Arts diploma from Syracuse College, the place he took courses in digital music and explored completely different video artwork strategies within the faculty’s Experimental Studios program. Conferences with teacher and mentor Jack Nelson, fellow classmate David Ross, and the artists Peter Campus and Nam June Paik all helped form his follow and encourage his work. He was additionally closely influenced by avant-garde pianist David Tudor, whom he met after commencement, and by the expertise of performing in Tudor’s electroacoustic “Rainforest IV” mission.
Maybe one in every of his best inspirations got here in 1977 on a visit to Melbourne, Australia, the place he met cultural arts director Kira Perov, who would go on to turn out to be his lifelong artistic collaborator. The 2 married in 1979, in response to the artist’s web site, and ultimately moved to Lengthy Seashore, the place they established a studio and raised their household.
Over the course of his life, Viola was the recipient of quite a few awards and honorary levels and was the main focus of main solo museum exhibitions, together with the two-year present Invoice Viola: A 25-12 months Survey, which originated on the Whitney Museum of American Artwork in 1997 and traveled to 6 museums in the US and Europe. He additionally represented the US on the forty sixth Venice Biennale in 1995, the place he introduced a set of 5 installations titled Buried Secrets and techniques that included the video work “The Greeting” (1995) — a mission impressed by the early Sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist painter Jacopo da Pontormo’s “The Visitation” (1528).
Worldwide success apart, Viola at all times felt that his work’s worth was not tethered to any sole assortment or exhibition.
“I’ve come to understand that an important place the place my work exists just isn’t within the museum gallery, or within the screening room, or on tv, and never even on the video display screen itself, however within the thoughts of the viewer who has seen it,” he said in 1989, in response to James Cohan Gallery.
The late artist is survived by Perov, who can also be director of Invoice Viola Studio; his sons Blake and Andrei Viola; his daughter-in-law Aileen Milliman; his brother Robert Viola; and his sister Andrea Freeman.
