Bill Viola
We are honored to present two major works by Bill Viola, Surrender and Unspoken (Silver & Gold), from the iconic series The Passions, on loan from the Giverny Capital Collection.
Bill Viola (1951-2024) is recognized as a pioneer of video art and immersive installations. Since the 1970s, his body of work has explored the major universal experiences of the human condition through moving images, sound, and installations. Drawing inspiration from both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, Viola developed a contemplative approach in which technology fades away to give rise to an introspective experience. True moving paintings, his works invite a slowing of the gaze and an immersion in temporality and emotion.
Considered a master of video art, Bill Viola presented his work in the world’s leading international museums, including the Grand Palais (Paris), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), and Palazzo Strozzi (Florence). Representing the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1995, he profoundly marked the history of contemporary art by pushing the emotional, spiritual, and narrative limits of the moving image.
Among his most significant series, The Passions occupies a central place. Developed from the late 1990s onward, this major series by Bill Viola, composed of twenty video works, draws on Old Master painting, spirituality, and the psychology of emotions to explore human vulnerability through facial expressions and bodily presence. Through slowness and the intensity of movement, these installations of rare emotional power convey the complexity of inner states.
At Arsenal Contemporary Art, the works Surrender and Unspoken (Silver & Gold) fully embody this research, immersing the viewer in a visual and meditative experience in which time seems suspended, between mourning, tension, and silence.
Surrender
In Surrender, two human figures give themselves over to a silent emotional collapse. Their faces slowly incline toward the surface of the water, until the reflection becomes altered, blurring the boundary between presence and absence. Through this minimal and hypnotic device, the work powerfully conveys themes of mourning, loss, and the fragility of existence, transforming the image into a space for reflection and visual meditation.
Unspoken (Silver & Gold)
Unspoken (Silver & Gold) takes the form of a video diptych projected onto surfaces of silver and gold leaf, where materiality directly shapes the perception of light and movement. Filmed in very low light, two figures move through successive waves of emotion and anguish, oscillating between appearance and disappearance. The work embodies the intensity of emotional tension and the dialogue between ancient traditions and contemporary technologies, a defining aesthetic characteristic of Bill Viola.
Bill Viola, Unspoken (Silver and Gold), 2001, Ed. 1/3, black-and-white video projection on gold and silver leaf panels, diptych, 24 ½ x 76 x 2 ¼ in.