Artists Research

Bill Viola (b.1951) is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For over 35 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola’s video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. His single channel videotapes have been widely broadcast and presented cinematically, while his writings have been extensively published, and translated for international readers. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way. (artiststatements.wordpress.com)

Summary and Reflection

I first looked at Bill Viola’s work in ART 423: Contemporary Art last Fall and became intrigued with his use of video and manipulations of time and space to tap into the spiritual. For me looking at spirituality which is typically so tied to nature and the earth to use something as new-aged as film and video with digital effects is contradictory. Viola’s work makes you feel uncomfortable you’re forced to interrogate the contrasted and dramatic images in his art and think about yourself or someone else in your life. Viola’s current solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts is titled “Life Death Rebirth” and brings Michelangelo’s work alongside his to show the parallels of, as the Royal Academy of Arts phrased, “transcendent beauty and emotional power”. I think this exhibition in particular is a phenomenal display of humanity and how we as people centuries later are still trying to understand humanity ourselves.

As a contemporary multimedia artist myself I look to Viola’s work foremost as a pioneering video artist, my primary medium, and secondly because it makes myself feel something deep beneath the surface. I spent probably the first sixteen or seventeen years of my life blindly believing in the institution of Christianity specifically the Moravian denomination in a small town in North Carolina. One might could say I was a good ole Bible Belt boy. However, now I’m interrogating these things, a firm believer in God, but I too am looking for answers like Viola and Michelangelo and hopefully people centuries from now look to my work alongside their’s still looking for answers about divinity and spirituality. 

Lesley Dill is one of the most prominent American artists working at the intersection of language and fine art. Her elegant sculptures, art installations, mixed-media photographs, and evocative performances draw from both her travels abroad and profound interests in spirituality and the world’s faith traditions. Exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche, Dill invests new meaning in the human form. Intellectually and aesthetically engaging, the core of her work emerges from an essential, visionary awareness of the world. (lesleydill.net)

I was randomly assigned Lesley Dill in my Contemporary Art class to present on for the "Language" unit we did and I fell in love with her work. As someone who has worked in retail and been in theatre her use of fabrics to create these enormous installations is breathtaking. While her career has expanded across many mediums her recent works of installations involving tapestries and poetry are of the most interest to me. 

“My work revolves around language,” Dill said. “Language is my linchpin for being able to move in so many different forms of art-making. I believe in the power of the human word.”

“I’m interested in the alchemy of language, the uncertainty of meaning and the resonance within our bodies with a metaphor clicks… Language is a manifestation of the human need to reach out. As much as my work is about language, it’s also about what the image does to you, and how the two together make a whole.”

Dill's work on these large scale costume and tapestry installation were originally printed with solely Emily Dickinson's poetry. In recent years she has extended to different poets but remains solely as printing poetry. The costumes and tapestry evolve the message and bring it to life.

Faith & The Devil (2011) was inspired by her husband's stories as a documentary filmmaker in the Middle East and the horrendous things he would see as if the devil was alive and well. 

HELL HELL HELL HEAVEN HEAVEN HEAVEN: ENCOUNTERING SISTER GERTRUDE MORGAN& REVELATION (2010) was inspired by the stories of the New Orleans saint  Sister Gertrude Morgan who was a Preacher, Artist, Musician, and Poet. The piece tells the story of her visions of the Revelation from God.

Wilderness: Words Are Where What I Catch Is Me (2018) explores the ideas of divinity and deviltry in early America. She was exploring and reflecting the social impacts of figures such as John Browne, Anne Hutchinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman. 

In my own recent life reflections and work I'm working through similar ideas of divinity and theology to think and discuss. I personally love the way Dill is exploring these ideas through her work and blending poetry in to installation art. It takes the word "multimedia" to a different dimension beyond different fine art mediums, but into literature and poetry.

 

Banksy is a British street artist who uses an anonymous identity whatever he creates his work. He has been active since the 1980s and still uses the alias Banksy. There has been speculation as to who Banksy might actually be but it is still yet to be clear, they have not revealed their identity to the general public. It’s said that Banksy‘s primary reason for concealing their identity is that they were imprisoned for a minor crime before they began their artist career and since their work is essentially graffiti they used the alias to be anonymous.

While I’m a big fan of Banksy’s works in their aesthetic and creative value I think for the sake of our class he’s an interesting one to look at because all of his work is essentially public art. Public art is essentially site-specific art I think that’s what we’re covering and he someone that I find interesting aesthetically but also conceptually I chose to do banks again.

I think Banksy’s piece, Dismaland, the large installation of a dark and creepy take on Disney World. I love how the piece was open to the public and took a spin on the classic contemporary colossal capitalists world that is Disney World. The interaction and interrogation of the dystopian work juxtaposed to the idea of “happy” of Disney World. These themes of “frictional dichotomies” essentially the juxtaposition of the two.

Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist and pioneer in the field of digital and interactive art. Utterback’s work explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and physicality in visually layered ways. Her work focuses attention on the continued relevance and richness of the body in our increasingly mediated world. To create her projects, Utterback combines various sensing and display technologies with the custom software she writes. Whether expressed in the form of architectural-scale projections, custom LED lighting, or intimate sculptures with embedded LCD screens, Utterback’s work engages participants in a process of embodied discovery as they explore the possibilities and behaviors of her physically engaged systems.

Camille Utterback works in interactive sculpture and installation. In this research I paid particular focus to her work with live streaming and how that plays a role in her installations. In Entangled (2015) the viewer's silhouette is captured and it plays an intricate part in the image being projected. Utterback's purpose in the piece was to capture the amount of that we are entangled with out own technology. Another interactive piece was Glimpse (2012) that was a commission for a private collection in the owner's home foyer. The piece traces the steps of the people that pass by and creates an interactive painting of sorts that is constantly changing.

Utterback's work is critical in a world that is constantly becoming more and more intertwined with technology. We cannot escape technology it is constantly tracing our lives and leaving a residue and an impact on our own lives and the world as a whole. The impact technology has transcends the environment, politics, and economics and Utterback is capturing that in the world.