Bill Viola Movies

Viola's seminal piece, The Reflecting Pool, was made three decades ago on analogue video tape and yet could easily pass for a contemporary digital...

Playing Soul Music to My Freckles is a minimalist performance in which a bare loudspeaker, playing an Aretha Franklin song, is seen on the artist's...

Songs of Innocence, which directly references the visionary Romanticism of William Blake, is haunted with symbolic transformations, as shifting light...

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern,...

One of Paik’s most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history,...

The rituals and philosophies of indigenous non-Western cultures recur throughout Viola's work. In 1976, he travelled to the Solomon Islands with...

Moving through its five parts, the work describes a cycle of birth through to death, depicting both an eternal, universal Mary, and an earthly Mary...

Junkyard Levitation is a visual pun on the concept of "mind over matter," as a man attempts to levitate while lying prone in a junkyard. Writes...

A series of shots depicting "America" are laid over a classic Gregorian Chant recreated through the distortion of a woman's screams.

Part of Bill Viola's "Transfigurations" series, this work shows a mother and her daughters enacting a transfiguration when they choose to pass...

Video/sound installation featuring two channels of color video projections from opposite walls of a large, darkened gallery; custom video switching...

In this work's left panel, The Crossing (1996), a walking male figure is consumed by fire on a 27-foot vertical plasma screen projection while in the...

Video on two flat-screen monitors with sound

In terming these tapes "songs," Viola references the relation of his work to musical structures and to the poetics of Romanticism. 4 tapes (Junkyard...

Continuously running video installation: in a small alcove, a wood column extends from the floor and ceiling, with a gap in the center formed by two...

Using a camera moving along a predetermined path to create the effect of a simulated zoom, Sweet Light refers to the seduction of illumination,...

Return is a methodical construction of the approach of an individual towards an unseen goal, which assumes metaphorical significance. Viola moves...

Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of...

Information is an exercise in technological reflexivity, an early investigation of the material presence of the electronic medium. From a technical...

Viola describes Moonblood as "an expression of the feminine principle, a work in three parts relating to a personal concept of woman and mother. Day...