Bill Viola to exhibit his video art in Florence

FLORENCE, ITALY – From March 10 to July 23, 2017, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi will be introducing the Florentine public to Bill Viola – Electronic Renaissance, an exhibition celebrating this unchallenged master of video art.

A single, comprehensive exhibition occupying both the Piano Nobile and the Strozzina will immerse visitors in space, music and sound. The exhibition tracks the career of this artist from his early experimental work in the 1970s right up to his monumental installations of the 21st century.

Exploring the Viola’s exhibition

Exploring spirituality, experience and perception, Bill Viola probes humanity: people, bodies and faces are the leading players in his work with its poetic and strongly symbolic style. Man interacts with the forces and energies of nature such as water and fire, light and dark, the cycle of life and the cycle of rebirth.

The Renaissance setting of Palazzo Strozzi fuels mesmerising interaction between the classic and the contemporary by fostering innovative dialogue between Viola’s work and the masterpieces of the great masters of the past, from which he has drawn his inspiration and which have marked the development of his artistic vocabulary and style.

Bill Viola’s realtionship with Florence

Thus the exhibition is a celebration of Bill Viola’s special relationship with Florence, where his career in video art began when he was technical director of art/tapes/22, a video production and documentation centre from 1974 to 1976.

His bond with Tuscany is further enhanced by the exhibition’s intense interaction with the Opera del Duomo, Uffizi and Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

Bill Viola, born in 1951, is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art.

Two years ago the American artist Bill Viola visited the Vasari Corridor in the Uffizi Galleries and admired his self-portrait Submerged.