Art Madrid'23 – BIll Viola video art floods the Guggenheim

 

 

 

Going Forth By Day, 2002. “The Deluge” 

 

 

Bill Viola (New York, 1951) was graduated from Syracuse University in 1973. He has been an essential figure in the field of contemporary video art. He has created installations, video/films, sound environments, flat panel video pieces and works for concerts, opera and sacred spaces. Influenced by classical painting and by both Eastern and Western culture (Zen Buddhism and Christian mysticism), he works on universal human themes such as time, life and death and passions. Through them he tries to describe our experience in the world.

 

 

Catherine’s Room, 2001

 

 

Viola’s artistic career has been developed at the same time of media technologies. He has worked closely with Kira Perov, his wife and collaborator. Within his first videos, we find `The reflecting pool´, that describes the emergence of the individual into the natural world; or `Four Songs´, which presents musical narratives that explore the psychological/emotional dynamics of the individual. In the 80´s, he made projects for broadcast television. Afterwards, he developed whole room installations that immerse the viewer in images and sound. During 90´s, he introduced sculptural objects, like his huge rotating screen from his `Slowly Turning Narrative´, of 1992. In this piece, the room and all persons within it become a continually shifting projection screen, enclosing the image and its reflections, and all locked into the regular cadence of the chanting voice and the rotating screen.

 

 

Surrender, 2001

 


With the arrival of the high-definition flat screens, Viola began to produce small and medium-format pieces in a series he titled the `Passions´. Among them, we can find `Catherine’s Room´, 2001, a view into the privacy of a solitary woman who goes about a series of daily rituals. Last decade pieces still reflect his existential thinking. His last creation is ´Inverted birth’, that talk about birth and death through darkness and light and using fluids that symbolize the essence of life (earth, blood, milk, water and air).

 

 

Tristan’s Ascension, 2005

 

 

Bill Viola´s videos, in slow motion make the spectator escape from agitated life. his from his Workshops and talks. Visitor will be able to contemplate VIola´s video-art in Guggenheim rooms until the 9th of November. Besides, exits the opportunity of attending workshops or talks in parallel.

 

 

Inverted Birth, 2014

 

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.