Acquisitions
ARTIST ROOMS: The d'Offay Donation
Bill Viola (born 1951)
One room comprising two works: Catherine’s Room, 2001 and Four Hands, 2001.
Viola was one of the earliest artists to utilise film and video in a fine-art context and through his depictions of raw human emotion has achieved popular acclaim in recent years. He has continued to utilise progressively more advanced equipment to realise works in which the technology can be hidden in order to focus on highly staged moving images. Influenced by both Western and Eastern art history and spiritual practices, Viola’s work frequently evokes mystical or religious experience. Catherine’s Room, based on a fourteenth-century predella by Andrea di Bartolo, presents scenes from the life of St Catherine across a sequence of five screens, using contrasts of light and dark to dramatic effect. Four Hands concentrates on actions made by a pair of disembodied hands reminiscent of Indian ‘mudras’, the symbolic gestures of Buddhist and Hindu religious iconography. Both works characterise the more intimate aspects of Viola’s practice, which can be contrasted with his monumental projects dealing with universal themes of birth, death and regeneration.
Catherine's Room 2001
Video on 5 LCD panel displays
381 x 2460 x 57 mm
Artist’s proof aside from the edition of 6
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Bill Viola Studio
Artists
- Diane Arbus
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- Georg Baselitz
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- Joseph Beuys
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- Vija Celmins
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- Ellen Gallagher
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- Gilbert & George
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- Johan Grimonprez
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- Richard Hamilton
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- Ian Hamilton Finlay
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- Damien Hirst
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- Jenny Holzer
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- Alex Katz
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- Anselm Kiefer
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- Jeff Koons
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- Jannis Kounellis
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- Sol LeWitt
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- Richard Long
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- Robert Mapplethorpe
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- Agnes Martin
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- Mario Merz
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- Ron Mueck
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- Bruce Nauman
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- Charles Ray
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- Gerhard Richter
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- Ed Ruscha
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- Robert Ryman
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- Robert Therrien
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- Cy Twombly
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- Bill Viola
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- Andy Warhol
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- Lawrence Weiner
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- Francesca Woodman
