More artist information refer to artist's personal website :http://www.billviola.com/biograph.htm
and James Cohan: https://www.jamescohan.com/artists/bill-viola
This blog mainly records some of my thoughts and ideas after visiting an exhibition called "Life DEATH Rebirth", organized by the Royal Academy of Arts. The Royal Academy of Arts will bring together the work of pioneering video artist Bill Viola (b. 1951), with drawings by Michelangelo (1475 -1564). Though working five centuries apart and in radically different media, these artists share a deep preoccupation with the nature of human experience and existence. This exhibition is conceived as an immersive journey through the cycles of life, exploring the transience and tumult of existence and the possibility of rebirth. It will begin and end with a pairing of works that reflect on a central paradox: the presence of death in life.
The first thing you see when you get into the exhibition is Viola's video work in 1996. ‘The Messenger'
The Messenger，Bill Viola，1996
In the work, a naked man's body floats and slowly surfaced from bottomless's water. Accompanied by heavy breathing, after a brief 47 seconds, the man was again covered in water and pushed into a dark distance. The whole process reminds me of the state of the baby in the womb and the ethereal state of the person after death, and it is intuitive to say that I seem to see a person's life from that image. Then I did some research to know the work refers to Christian and Buddhist traditions of rebirth or reincarnation. Conceived for Durham Cathedral, its title in that context might have evoked St John the Baptist or Christ himself. As almost always in Viola's work, however, the figure on screen is not particularized, but stands for us.
Almost all of my knowledge of "reincarnation" is based on the "six cycles in Chinese traditional culture：
1、天人道（化生）；2、阿修罗道（魔）；3、人道；4、 畜牲道；5、饿鬼道；6、地狱道。However, in the six roads, but with humanity as the center, because of the human heart of the concept of good and evil and arbitrary pursuit, resulting in the results. It means that for a lifetime will have an impact on the new life you get after death.
When I search on wikipedia，Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death.
Back in Viola's work, I began to think
1. Why must the character of the image be a man?
2. What are men thinking about when they sink to the bottom and surface? 3. If life is a moment of struggle after another silence, then what do we exist for?
Along with these questions, I saw the second work.
Nantes Triptych，Bill Viola，1992
Viola has taken the form of the triptych, traditionally used in Western art for religious paintings, to represent, through the medium of video, his own contemporary form of spiritual iconography. From left to right，these videos show the birth，a metaphorical journey（a body floating in water）and death. The three passages are accompanied by a soundtrack of crying, water movement and breathing in a 30-minute loop. In this compacted space birth and death eclipse the dreamy suspension which represents, in the central panel, the thinking, active human life. Here it is not life’s journey which is important, but its beginning and end. It is worth mentioning that the dying old man in the right part is Viola's mother. Viola filmed his mother as she lay dying in a coma in 1991 as a means of confronting her death artistically.
Interestingly, as I watched the work, I found that I was surrounded by elderly people sitting on the bench, and next to them was a young mother holding a baby, they looked at the screen carefully and I looked at them carefully. Their state, as the image shows, is new and dead, one left and one right. Death is relative to new life. Once again, the word "reincarnation" is mentioned here.
Perhaps for most people pay more attention to the beginning and end of the story, but I resonate with the floating figure between the two videos. At times calmly and at others in turmoil. It is an ethereal image of life, floating outside of time, suggestive of inner dimensions that are not bound by our mortal, corporeal presence. The idea was: in addition to birth and death, all the rest of the life is chaotic, with the flow, do not resist or struggle. Sometimes, watching more and more clear, the next second slowly back to blur. I felt myself being brought into the image, floating as if it were myself, or everyone in the world.
Man Searching for Immortality/Woman Searching for Eternity, Bill Viola, 2013
Life-size images of an aging man and woman are projected onto two seven-foot high black granite slabs(suggestive of tombstones), showing them slowly examining every inch of their naked bodies by torchlight, unable to hide from their earthly state, which evoke a sense of impending mortality. I think about why men and women are not allowed to explore each other in images, thus can they find who they really are? I repeatedly walked in front of the image and found that no matter where I go, the image of them are always watching me. Although they are image, but the eye to convey the feelings are sincere. I can feel them groping with themselves in order to prove their desire. People want to see themselves and know themselves before they die, but how many people can success?
I got a lot of inspiration from this exhibition, when I back to home, I choose to use these feelings in the form of sketch to show. "Death", "floating", "proof" and "rebirth" are the key words in my sketch.
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