Bill Viola — Les Galeries nationales du Grand Palais — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 5 → July 21, 2014

Bill Viola — Grand Palais L’abandon et la totale immersion qu’exige l’œuvre de Bill Viola représentent certainement l’un des défis les plus intéressants rele... 2 - Bien Critique

With twenty masterly works — hours of video on over thirty screens — Bill Viola at the Grand Palais is one of the largest retrospectives of this artist’s work. Bill Viola’s oeuvre has been shown and celebrated in the world’s greatest museums. All that was missing was a retrospective in France, where, although little of his work is on display in the national museums, Bill Viola was acknowledged early on as a major artist with shows in the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris in 1983, the Fondation Cartier in 1990, the Musée de Nantes in 1992, and the Festival d’automne in 1996.

Bill Viola’s skillful use of video technology conjures up a vast digital world of images, at times inspired by the great works of art history. In this exhibition we see references to such masters as Goya The Sleep of Reason, 1988 and Hieronymus Bosch The Quintet of the Astonished, 2000. The spectacular polyptych Going Forth By Day, 2002 is an ensemble of huge digital wall panels in the spirit of Giotto’s frescoes in the Assisi basilica, which Viola declares is the unequalled summit of art installation and his ultimate reference.

Bill Viola, Ascension, 2000 Installation vidéo sonore Courtesy of the artist & Bill Viola Studio, Long Beach, Etats-Unis

Viola sees this exhibition as an inner journey, divided into three phases around major metaphysical questions: Who am I? Where am I? Where am I going? In his works he explores life, death, transcendence, rebirth, time and space, often using the metaphor of a body plunged into water to represent the fluidity of life. His images seek to give a new insight into these fundamental questions that are deep at the core of human existence. A dimension that gives his work special universal power, beyond any art movement or style, which explains why this body of work has fascinated viewers all over the world for the last forty years.