Bill Viola Oct 23rd- Dec 19th @ James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea
There are few artists whose work has raised their genre’s profile as much as Bill Viola’s has for video art. From installations at major international galleries and institutions, to the stages of great opera houses and traditional places of worship, Viola’s instantly recognizable style often involves a pace that is slowed to the point of maddening near-abstraction, inversions of scale vis-à-vis architectural settings, and a narrative lexicon that draws on both secular and religious memes of transformation such as sleep and divine revelation. Using cutting-edge technology and sublime sound, Viola’s work actually achieves the kind of soul-swelling emotional effect that his source materials were also aiming for. – Shana Nys Dambrot @ Flavorpill
