Bill Viola Exhibit Review

Bill Viola Exhibit Review

The exhibition was at the James Cohan gallery and there were two artworks, one is called the ‘Moving Stillness: Mount Rainer’  from 1979 and the other one is called ‘The Sleepers’ from 1992. Both of the artworks represents human’s consciousness and have features that relate to water and light. Moreover, both artworks include projections and are placed in a dark room. The artwork ‘Moving Stillness: Mount Rainer’ projects a video of the nature and the picture changes throughout time with three different colors, red, green and blue forming the picture of the mountain. Underneath the projector was a tank of water, the water slightly moves when the three beams of the mountain picture become patterns that was relfected on the water’s surface. Moving on,  the artwork that caught my eye was the ‘The Sleepers’, where there were many drum-like gallons placed in the darkroom and it attracts you to look closer to it since you can see light coming out of it, which makes you more curious about the work.

 

Furthermore, when you walk towards the artwork ‘The Sleepers’, you may realize there was water in the gallons and different video playing projected in the drum-like gallon. The video that projects on the surface of the water were videos of different person sleeping with a monochrome filter. If you stay longer and watched the videos, you will realize the person who sleeps continues to sleep, although the person may adjust the position of the head and with some movements. The interpretation which I have got out from the water was the human experiences throughout time. For myself, I was confused by the elements of water and gallon, but by guessing I believe the gallon creates a private space for individual “sleepers” and the water becomes a metaphor for me of time because I heard a phrase once about that “time is like a river. You cannot touch the same water twice because the flow that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of your life.” Therefore, the water stands for time, which each “sleepers” sleeps differently every time, although sleep remains the same, however, our mind and body have slight changes in each sleep. It was also interesting to watch the “sleepers” sleep because different people sleep differently and you may see the small differences and adjustments when different people fall asleep.

On the other hand, not only the artwork shows you the process of the “sleepers” by video, but by watching the videos in each water gallons takes the viewer’s time as well. The sequence in this artwork was quite clear because you can see clearly that it was the process of different people’s sleep. It was linear since there weren’t any other videos in the videos that appear in the middle of watching it and the simultaneity of the videos weren’t the same; each video plays with a different person sleeping. The pace (speed)  of the videos was played with consistency, each video was quite long, you may need to stay a while for it to finish playing to the end. After each video ends, it repeats playing again and there was the repetition in the designs of the gallons and all the videos were projected in the same size. The outside designs of the gallons are uninformed with the same traits and colors. They were placed randomly in the corner of the room, but it did not look messy since there was space between each of them.

At last, looking at the overview of the gallery, there were only two of Bill Viola’s art installations, both of the artworks exert the same theme and colors. Both of the artworks, ‘Moving Stillness: Mount Rainer’ and ‘The Sleepers’ used the element of water and projection conveying time and the human experiences by nature and by human themselves.