Bill Viola
Bill Viola
Bill Violais a contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMultimedia Artist
Date of Birth25 January 1951
CountryUnited States of America
sides world surface
There's another world out there just beyond the world we're in. It's just on the other side of that translucent, semitransparent surface.
world invisible
There is an invisible world out there, and we are living in it.
running knives doctors
A doctor once told me that with crying you aren't sure what its derivation is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you don't cry: you scream, you try to run. When it's over and you're OK, that's when you cry.
dna light speed
The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light.
art museums people
People have experiences in art museums today that they used to have in church.
I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open.
rocks tree feelings
Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity... but theres a feeling that life is interconnected, that theres life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.
vision impression
It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision.
age different forgotten
I would prefer to be forgotten, then rediscovered in a different age.
heart revolution individual
Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts.
art together just-being
A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together.
memories fall communication
Fifty years from now I don't think optical realism is going to be an issue in visual communication any more. Experience is so much richer than light falling on your retina. You embody a microcosm of reality when you walk down the street - your memories, your varying degrees of awareness of what's going on around you, everything we could call the contextualizing information. Representing that information is going to be the main issue in the years ahead - how the world meets the mind, not the eye.
art self long
Art has always had as its test in the long term the ability to speak to our innermost selves.
art reflection space
When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional - a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.