Exhibition

Bill Viola: The Veiling

June 26, 2019–October 6, 2019

Bill Viola. The Veiling (detail), 1995.
Bill Viola, The Veiling, 1995. Video and sound installation, including two channels of color video projections from opposite sides of dark gallery through nine scrims suspended from ceiling, two channels of amplified mono sound, and two speakers. 138 x 264 x 372 inches (ideal room dimensions). Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.

The Veiling is one of five video and sound installations that Bill Viola produced to occupy the five rooms of the US Pavilion during the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995. Through a collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Viola created a system of nine sheer scrims that catch the light from two video projections. Images of a man and a woman can be seen slowly walking toward each other, passing through the scrims, and merging at the center before moving apart again. This ghostly action, repeating over and over, becomes hypnotic. Like much of Viola’s work, The Veiling has a dreamlike quality and suggests the multiplicity of experience that exists both in our own thoughts and our understanding of our interaction with another human being.

This installation is being presented as part of a larger survey of works by the pioneering American video artist also on view at the Barnes Foundation. Organized for the Barnes by guest curator John G. Hanhardt, I Do Not Know What I Am Like: The Art of Bill Viola, on view June 30 through September 15, 2019, is the first-large scale exhibition of Viola’s work to be presented in Philadelphia.

Location

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
First Floor


Artists in This Exhibition


About the Artist

American, born 1951, lives in Long Beach, California.
Bill Viola earned his BFA from Syracuse University in 1973. He is regarded as a pioneer and leading artist in the field of video art. In addition to his selection as the representative from the United States at the 1995 Venice Biennale, his work has been the subject of many major museum exhibitions including a 25-year retrospective organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1997 (with a tour including the participation of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Art Institute of Chicago, among others). In 1989, Viola received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award; previous awards include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation (1982) and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1985). He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from Syracuse University (1995), California College of Arts and Crafts (1998), and Massachusetts College of Art (1999).