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Bill Viola
Silent Mountain, 2001

Photo: Courtesy Anthony d’ Offay Gallery, London, 2007

Collection

Bill Viola

Two-channel video installation on monitors, color, silent
15 min
101.5 x 122 x 10.8 cm (each screen)

Silent Mountain is part of a series of works called The Passions, exploring the power and range of human emotions. A feature of the portraits and tableaux of the series is the removal of sound and the incorporation of time, which relocates the subjects to a place and dimension outside our own. The resulting extended silence, reminiscent of devotional paintings, goes against the tempo of mainstream film yet remains capable of expressing wonder, misery, ecstasy and rage. In Silent Mountain the two panels show a man and a woman, expressing intensifying signs of emotional stress. She contorts, hugging herself twisting and crouching, he holds his head in agony, with gestures that at times emulate classical poses. They stand in parallel isolation, unaware of their companionship. Each in a private emotional trajectory bound by profound grief or remorse. Their agony ends in a scream, in a sudden explosion that is both an expression of their pain and a release from it. Bill Viola has said that Silent Mountain is "probably the loudest scream I’ve recorded."

*1951 in New York, USA | Living and working in Long Beach, USA

CURRENT LOANS

Group exhibition: À bruit secret. Hearing in Art
Venue: Museum Tinguely, Basel
February 22, 2023 - May 14, 2023
Curator: Annja Müller-Alsbach

Artist's Website

http://www.billviola.com/

Bill ViolaSilent Mountain, 2001

Bill Viola
Silent Mountain, 2001