The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is premiering a new work by pioneering American video and installation artist Bill Viola as part of a major survey of the last 20 years of Viola’s influential career. Situated in YSP’s Chapel and Underground Gallery, the immersive exhibition of ten works is the most extensive exhibition in the UK by the artist for over 10 years.
Viola engages with the universal human experiences of life, death, love, and spirituality to create video installations that explore what he describes as “the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge.” He draws inspiration from Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism.
Viola’s new installation, “The Trial,” which is on show in the YSP’s Underground Gallery, portrays the “five stages of awakening through a series of violent transformations.” The intense two-screen work depicts two bare-chested figures, one male and female, as they are drenched with a series of different coloured liquids in an ordeal that fluctuates in intensity as the cycle changes and progresses.
The Underground Gallery also features three works from the “Transfigurations” series as well as “The Unveiling,” “Man Searching for Immortality/Woman Searching for Eternity” (2013), “The Dreamers” (2013), and “Night Vigil” (2005/9). The 18th century Chapel houses “Fire Woman” and “Woman and Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall)” (both 2005).
Clare Lilley, Director of Programme at YSP, said that the exhibition aims to be especially meaningful to the Sculpture Park’s intergenerational audience. “The exhibition is a journey through time and landscape, presenting both intimate and dramatic experiences in one of the most powerful and singular exhibitions of Viola’s career,” he said.
See the video above to see an exclusive excerpt of Viola’s new installation “The Trial,”
Video by the Bill Viola Studio. Courtesy the Bill Viola Studio
