From 24 February to 25 June 2023 Palazzo Reale in Milan presents an important exhibition dedicated to what has been considered the undisputed master of video art since the 1970s: BILL VIOLA .

The BILL VIOLA exhibition, promoted by the Municipality of Milan-Culture, is produced and organized by Palazzo Reale and Arthemisia with the collaboration of the Bill Viola Studio and traces Viola's entire artistic career, presenting fifteen masterpieces to the public in the halls of Royal Palace.

Born in New York in 1951, of Italian-American origins, Bill Viola is internationally recognized as the artist who, through the experimentation of video art, has created unique works, considered in all respects masterpieces of contemporary art.

Starting from the study of electronic music, from the potential of performance art and experimental films, for over 40 years Viola has been creating works which, through a new artistic language, constantly address life, death and the intermediate journey, in order to be able to investigate a more deep knowledge of man and his relationship with the environment, the influences of Eastern and Western philosophy, the iconic importance of the natural world and many other topics.

The travel experience, for Viola, is fundamental in the development of her work. Inspired by the realities he encounters in his travels around the world with his wife Kira Perov, between the seventies and eighties, Viola outlines his artistic career and comes to the creation of works that envelop the observer with compositions and sounds, seeking to represent the infinite possibilities of the human psyche and soul.

Among these, fundamental milestones are the 18 months spent in Florence, where he meets Renaissance art for the first time. In 1997, during a Getty research project, he continued to explore early Christian iconography, with particular attention to medieval, Renaissance and Mannerist imagery in an ongoing dialogue with altarpieces, polyptychs and votive paintings by early artists. Viola then proposed a new composition of the image through the construction of elaborate theatrical scenes inspired by the western art-historical tradition, cinematographic in the truest sense of the word, with settings, actors, sets, light design, photography – and even a director.