by Carla St Louis
Bill Viola: Artistic Visionary In A Digital World
Along with Vanity Fair, the Museum of Contemporary Art presented Bill Viola’s exhibition, Liber Insularum to over 3,000 art lovers including the world’s most renowned artists, collectors, celebrities, gallerists, and journalists during Art Basel.
A leading practioner of video art, Bill Viola is a contemporary artist who draws from Eastern & Western spiritual traditions.
Internationally recognized as one of today’s leading pioneers in the art of video, Viola is renowned for creating immersive video installations that explores themes like reality, consciousness, unconsciousness, time, birth, and death.
Liber Insularum featured 12 video projections and high-definition video on plasma displays.
The venue marked the first public presentation of Viola’s new piece, Ancestors, a recently completed video work that explores the layers of reality and illusion in the physical world, and the dimensions between and beyond it.
Inspired by the 15th century book, The Book of the Islands of the Archipelago by Florentine ecclesiastic Christoforo Buondelmonti, Viola used this historic text as a reference point to engage with distinctly modern themes of spiritual isolation in a 21st century global landscape.
Held on December 4th, the guest list included Lyor Cohen, Stella McCartney, Nan Bush, Bruce Weber, Nicole Miller, Domingo Zapata, Bonnie Clearwater, Calvin Klein, Eva Chow, Christian Slater, Agustine Woodgate, Sandra Brant, Ingrid Sischey, Tracey Emin, Simon du Pury, Nina Johnson- Milewski, Dan Milewski, Irma and Norman Braman.
PHOTO GALLERY
(Click on thumbnails to enlarge pictures)
Photos by: Credits: Moca, Neville S.Shorter