Bill Viola: Suspended Time, an unmissable contemplative experience at the Ex Teresa Arte Actual

With the aim of promoting the digital transformation of society, and hand in hand with Fundación Telefónica Movistar, New York artist Bill Viola, father of video art, is presented for the first time in Mexico with the exhibition Bill Viola. Suspended Timewhich can be enjoyed for free from April 28 to August 28, 2022 at the Ex Teresa Arte Actual, from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

It is an exhibition of contemporary art where we are shown how emotions can be expressed through video art as a reflection of the digital transformation that society is experiencing today. Thus Bill Viola. Suspended Time It invites reflection thanks to its capacity for innovation and a contemplative art that is closely linked to the ideology and spiritual symbols that make up and inspire the American artist.

“One of Bill Viola’s great contributions to the art world is giving video the status of a creative medium in all its legitimacy. His work is very vast and extensive, little by little over time he began to opt for a more classical approach and to develop philosophical themes that are seen in the exhibition ”said Tito Rivas, Curator and Director of Ex Teresa Arte Actual.

Photo: Telefónica Movistar Foundation

Who is Bill Viola?

Bill Viola is a contemporary video artist who was born in New York City in 1951. He is considered one of the most influential figures in the generation of artists who use the new electronic audiovisual media. His works include video installations, auditory environments and performance, with themes revolve around the experiences and concerns of the human condition, such as birth, death and consciousness.

Viola has a career spanning more than five decades, being a recognized character in video art because she was one of the pioneers in developing its essence through it. In this sense, he has worked in recent years on new ways to innovate and promote his ideas through the use of technology.

Throughout the exhibition that can be enjoyed at the Ex Teresa Arte Actual, you will find two of her emblematic works with which Fundación Telefónica Movistar México directly collaborates: Fire Woman (2005) and Tristan’s Ascension (2005), which have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, at the Grand Palais in Paris and at the Royal Academy in London. The exhibition is made up of another 6 works that were specifically selected to coexist with the space of the Ex Teresa Arte Actual to generate a totally unique immersive, visual and auditory experience.

Photo: Telefónica Movistar Foundation

An artist of the future with one foot in the past

Despite working with new technologies, Bill Viola’s work is rooted in a very old tradition of art and representation in which the image plays a very powerful role. The artist’s reflection on the image goes beyond technological use and tries to communicate a philosophical sense to us.

Bill Viola. Suspended Time focuses on a concept that, as its name suggests, seeks to convey the idea that time can be suspended, in a work that tries to bring us closer to the fugitive and fleeting condition of the image in contrast to the imperishable, the need for transcendence from the ephemeral.

Photo: Telefónica Movistar Foundation

Time is everything that dissolves and wears away in space, and Bill Viola works with this concept above all from a perspective of the body as a sign and field of expression. On the other hand, several of Bill Viola’s works are deliberately produced in a vertical format, but the reference is not so much contemporary visual culture, but classical paintings.

Bill Viola is an artist with a deep spirituality. His work begins through technology but he always seeks something beyond it, generating a state of expression and communicating a cultural order, a cosmology. The way in which contemporary culture is linked to images through new technologies is reflected in the works of the New York artist.

Photo: Telefónica Movistar Foundation

Unlike other artistic expressions that stop at technology by itself, in this type of expression technology transcends because it merges with the interest of communicating something else. Universal questions that humanity has always asked and that we have continued to ask in front of a screen”, mentioned Tito Rivas, Curator and Director of Ex Teresa Arte Actual in an interview for Spaghetti Code.

Have you already visited the exhibition? Bill Viola. Suspended Time in the Ex Teresa Art today?

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Bill Viola: Suspended Time, an unmissable contemplative experience at the Ex Teresa Arte Actual