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A couple stand side by side, divided by a split screen. In agonisingly slow motion, they contort their faces and bodies, apparently wracked by a violent argument and the draining aftermath. At the climax, the two of them burst into explosive screams before shock and bewilderment descends.
Is it the latest Aerosmith video? A lost Sam Peckinpah-directs-soap-opera tape? No, it's Bill Viola, the self-described world's most famous video-installation artist, and he has touched down among Earthlings in Tokyo, bringing messages of birth, death, rebirth and the unfolding of consciousness. All in high-definition, plasma-screen colour.
A sort of hi-tech Zen philosopher, Viola has been doing this for a long time, having helped mount experiments in video art for Yoko Ono in her early days. First Dream, his first Asian retrospective at the Mori Art Museum, 25 years after he began studying Zen Buddhism in the Japanese countryside and video technology at the Sony labs, is expected to draw serious crowds. The show opened yesterday.
Drawing on ideas of religious transcendence, Viola's work at its best can be mesmerising and beautiful. At its worst, it's bland. Britain's Guardian newspaper once said his installations can resemble commercials for organic shampoo. Viola 'intends his art not for decoration or diversion or education but for transformation', says the introduction to his London National Gallery show in 2003.
Japan has been an abiding influence: one of Viola's formative experiences was watching Japanese museum visitors pray to Buddhist art. The encounter, so unlike western museums, where objects have been 'disconnected from their sacred role', made him question whether works of art could be brought to life, with the artist using lighting and sound instead of plaster and paint.