BILL VIOLA

Anchoring the exhibition is Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier 1979 (1979), installed in K3. This powerful installation depicts the mountain being reflected in a pool of water via a rear projection screen, which causes the image of Mount Rainier to be dependent on the state of the water’s surface. Any small disruption directly impacts the image and therefore, challenges the notion of a solid and immobile mountain. The faltering image of the mountain is stabilised only after time allows for the water to become still. In experiencing the distorted image of the mountain created by Viola, viewers confront a poetic illustration of time and the illusion of stability, while also experiencing a work of tremendous beauty and calm.K1 introduces a collection of Viola’s earliest videotape works on CRT monitors. Information (1973) embraces a technical mistake of production into an investigation of the material traits of the electronic medium; Four Songs (1976) portrays a collection of visual allegories in which the composition of video images and sounds narrates the psychological and emotional dynamics of the individual in interaction with the environment; and Ancient of Days (1979–81), as the artist himself has described, is ‘a series of canons and fugues for video expressing the nature of the passage of time.’ Also, in the front room of K1 is Poem B (The Guest House) (2006), a triptych of three flat panel monitors mounted on the wall, through which we share ‘sharp pains of memory and dull ache of hidden stories’ of a woman reflecting on the past and future of her life. The rear room of K1 is dedicated to Interval (1995). A significant work by the artist produced for his participation in the 46th Venice Biennale, the work is composed of two large projections that stand opposite each other. On one side of the room is an image of a naked man in a shower room slowly washing himself with a cloth. On the opposite side of the room is projected a series of violent images of fire and water intercut with close-ups of body orifices. The images are never present on opposite walls simultaneously. The juxtaposition of the two opposing energies of the peaceful and the violent, or the passive and the aggressive, is gradually bridged as the computer-controlled sequence of images is progressively sped up to a climax of volatile speed before an abrupt blackout on both screens. Finally, on the second floor of K1 is The Reflecting Pool (1977–9/1997). In this installation, we see the artist himself interacting with a pool of water framing the visual metaphor of water as a medium of spiritual (re)birth. The reflections and disturbances caused on the surface of the water in this work once again provides an alternative perception of time and space, highlighting different layers of the mind and consciousness.

Of Moving Stillness, Viola said, ‘the apparent solid, constant character of the image of the mountain is only due to a moment-to-moment coincidence of a set of factors, each independent and minutely variable.’ In this journey of finding our balance among the infinite variables of our surroundings, it is through this exhibition that we invite our audience to come and contemplate their own constants in life. However fleeting or faltering the encounter with that unique constant may be in the larger trajectory of time, stars certainly aligned to produce that moment of coincidence.