BILL VIOLA
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Bill Viola (b.1951) is considered a pioneer in the medium of video art and is internationally recognized as one of today's leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For over 35 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola's video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. His single channel videotapes have been widely broadcast and presented cinematically, while his writings have been extensively published, and translated for international readers. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.
Bill Viola received his BFA in Experimental Studios from Syracuse University in 1973 where he studied visual art with Jack Nelson and electronic music with Franklin Morris. During the 1970s he lived for 18 months in Florence, Italy, as technical director of production for Art/Tapes/22, one of the first video art studios in Europe, and then traveled widely to study and record traditional performing arts in the Solomon Islands, Java, Bali, and Japan. Viola was invited to be artist-in-residence at the WNET Channel 13 Television Laboratory in New York from 1976-1980 where he created a series of works, many of which were premiered on television. In 1977 Viola was invited to show his videotapes at La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) by cultural arts director Kira Perov who, a year later, joined him in New York where they married and began a lifelong collaboration working and traveling together.
In 1979 Viola and Perov traveled to the Sahara desert, Tunisia to record mirages. The following year Viola was awarded a U.S./Japan Creative Artist Fellowship and they lived in Japan for a year and a half where they studied Zen Buddhism with Master Daien Tanaka, and Viola became the first artist-in-residence at Sony Corporation's Atsugi research laboratories. Viola and Perov returned to the U. S. at the end of 1981 and settled in Long Beach, California, initiating projects to create art works based on medical imaging technologies of the human body at a local hospital, animal consciousness at the San Diego Zoo, and fire walking rituals among the Hindu communities in Fiji. In 1987 they traveled for five months throughout the American Southwest photographing Native American rock art sites, and recording nocturnal desert landscapes with a series of specialized video cameras. More recently, at the end of 2005, they journeyed with their two sons to Dharamsala, India to record a prayer blessing with the Dalai Lama.
Music has always been an important part of Viola's life and work. From 1973-1980 he performed with avant-garde composer David Tudor as a member of his Rainforest ensemble, later called Composers Inside Electronics. Viola has also created videos to accompany music compositions including 20th century composer Edgard Varèse' Déserts in 1994 with the Ensemble Modern, and, in 2000, a three-song video suite for the rock group Nine Inch Nails' world tour. In 2004 Viola began collaborating with director Peter Sellars and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen to create a new production of Richard Wagner's opera, Tristan und Isolde, which was presented in project form by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in December 2004, and later at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York (2007). The complete opera received its world premiere at the Opéra National de Paris, Bastille in April 2005.
Since the early 1970s Viola's video art works have been seen all over the world. Exhibitions include Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987; Bill Viola: Unseen Images, seven installations toured six venues in Europe, 1992-1994, organized by the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Kira Perov. Viola represented the U.S. at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 with Buried Secrets, a series of five new installation works. In 1997 the Whitney Museum of American Art organized Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey that included over 35 installations and videotapes and traveled for two years to six museums in the United States and Europe. In 2002 Viola completed his most ambitious project, Going Forth By Day, a five part projected digital "fresco" cycle, his first work in High-Definition video, commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Bill Viola: The Passions, a new series inspired by late medieval and early Renaissance art, was exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles in 2003 then traveled to the National Gallery, London, the Fondación "La Caixa" in Madrid and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. One of the largest exhibitions of Viola's installations to date, Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) (2006-2007), drew over 340,000 visitors to the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. In 2007 nine installations were shown at the Zahenta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and Ocean Without a shore was created for the 15th century Church of San Gallo during the Venice Biennale. In 2008 Bill Viola: Visioni interiori, a survey exhibition organized by Kira Perov, was presented in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni.
Viola is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989, and the first Medienkunstpreis in 1993, presented jointly by Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, and Siemens Kulturprogramm, in Germany. He holds honorary doctorates from Syracuse University (1995), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997), California Institute of the Arts (2000), and Royal College of Art, London (2004) among others, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000. In 1998 Viola was invited to be a Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles and in 2009 received the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT and the Catalonia International Prize, Barcelona, Spain. In 2006 he was awarded Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government. Bill Viola and Kira Perov, his wife and long-time collaborator, live and work in Long Beach, California.
KIRA PEROV
Kira Perov is executive director of Bill Viola Studio. She has worked closely with Bill Viola, her husband and partner since 1978, managing, guiding and assisting with the production of all of his videotapes and installations. With her knowledge of photography and video, she has also documented their working process on location and in the studio and amassed a large archive of images from their experiences together. The finished works have also been extensively documented, as objects as well as in digital form. She has worked on the cutting edge with printers to translate the moving images of video onto paper in stills and frame grabs, encouraging experimentation of printing techniques. She edits all Bill Viola publications, working closely with curators and designers. Perov also organizes and coordinates exhibitions of the work worldwide.
Before meeting Viola, Kira Perov was director of cultural activities at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, curating exhibitions and producing concerts. Later, at the Long Beach Museum of Art in California, Perov compiled a ten-year history of video art exhibitions and documented the video collection at the museum. Her photographs, including those documenting Viola's work, have been widely published.
CAREER
• Captain of the "TV Squad," 5th grade, P.S. 20, Queens, New York, 1960
• Independent artist since 1973
• Artist-in-residence, WNET Thirteen Television Laboratory, New York, 1976-81
• Lived in Japan on cultural exchange fellowship. Studied with Zen priest/painter Daien Tanaka, 1980
• Artist-in-residence at Sony Corporation's Atsugi Laboratories, 1980-81
• Instructor, Advanced Video, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, 1983
• Represented the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale in the US Pavilion, 1995
• Getty Scholar-in-residence at The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the
Humanities, Los Angeles, 1998
• Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, United States, 2000
AWARDS
• 1984 Polaroid Video Art Award for outstanding achievement, USA
• 1987 Maya Deren Award, American Film Institute, USA
• 1989 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, USA
• 1993 Skowhegan Medal (Video Installation), USA
• 2003 Cultural Leadership Award, American Federal of Arts, USA
• 2006 NORD/LB Art Prize, Bremen, Germany
• 2009 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT, Cambridge, MA
• 2009 Catalonia International Prize, Barcelona, Spain
HONORARY DEGREES
• 1995 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, Syracuse University, New York, USA
• 1997 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA
• 1998 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California, USA
• 1999 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• 2000 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, USA
• 2000 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, England
• 2004 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, Royal College of Art, London, England
• 2005 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois, USA
• 2006 Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California, USA
SELECTED ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
• 1973 "New Video Work," Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
• 1974 "Bill Viola: Video and Sound Installations," The Kitchen Center, New York
• 1979 "Projects: Bill Viola," The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1983 "Bill Viola," ARC, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
• 1985 "Summer 1985," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• 1985 "Bill Viola," Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
• 1987 "Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes," The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1988 "Bill Viola: Survey of a Decade," Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas
• 1989 "Bill Viola," Fukui Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukui City, Japan, part of The 3rd
Fukui International Video Biennale.
• 1990 "Bill Viola: The Sleep of Reason," Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Jouy-en-Josas,
France
• 1992 "Bill Viola: Nantes Triptych," Chappelle de l'Oratoire, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France
• 1992 "Bill Viola," Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, Washington (five installations)
• 1992 "Bill Viola: Two Installations," Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, England
• 1992 "Bill Viola. Unseen Images," Stadtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany. Travels
to: Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (1993); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (1993); Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (1993); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England (1993), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (1994)
• 1994 "Bill Viola: Stations," American Center inaugural opening, Paris, France
• 1994 "Bill Viola: Território do Invisível/Site of the Unseen," Centro Cultural/Banco do Brazil, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil
• 1995 "Buried Secrets," United States Pavilion, 46th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Travels to Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany (1995); Arizona State University Art Museum (1996)
• 1996 "Bill Viola: New Work," Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia (installation)
• 1996 "Bill Viola: The Messenger," Durham Cathedral, Visual Arts UK 1996, Durham, England. Travels to South London Gallery, London, England (1996); Video Positiva-Moviola, Liverpool, England; The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Oriel Mostyn, Gwynedd, Wales; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (1997)
• 1997 "Bill Viola: Fire, Water, Breath," Guggenheim Museum (SoHo), New York
• 1997 "Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey" organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art (catalogue). Travels to Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1998) (catalogue); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (1999); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (1999); Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (1999-2000)
• 2000 "The World of Appearances," Helaba Main Tower, Frankfurt, Germany (permanent installation)
• 2000 "Bill Viola: New Work," James Cohan Gallery, New York
• 2001 "Bill Viola: Five Angels for the Millennium," Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
• 2002 "Bill Viola: Going Forth By Day," Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
• 2003 "Bill Viola: The Passions," Getty Museum, Los Angeles
• 2003 "Bill Viola," Kukje Gallery, Seoul
• 2003 "Bill Viola: Five Angels for the Millennium," Ruhrtriennale, Gasometer, Oberhausen, Germany
• 2003 "Bill Viola: The Passions," National Gallery, London
• 2004 "Bill Viola: Temporality and Transcendence," Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
• 2005 "Bill Viola: The Passions," Fundación "la Caixa," Madrid, Spain
• 2005 "Bill Viola Visions," ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark
• 2005 "Bill Viola," James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
• 2005 "Tristan und Isolde," fully staged opera premiere at the Opéra National de Paris, France
• 2006 "Bill Viola – Video", 2006 Recipient of the NORD/LB Art Prize, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany
• 2006 "LOVE/DEATH The Tristan Project," Haunch of Venison (two venues), London, UK
• 2007 "Bill Viola, Works from the Tristan Project," James Cohan Gallery, New York
• 2007 "Bill Viola," Galeria Zacheta, Warsaw, Poland
• 2008 "Bill Viola: Visioni interior," Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy
• 2008 "Tristan et Isolde," Opera National de Paris, France