Nantes Triptych @ Bill Viola. 1992
NANTES TRIPTYCH, 1992
Nantes Triptych, 1992
Video/sound installation
Edition 1: Fonds national d’art contemporain, Commande publique conçue pour le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, Ministère de la Culture, Paris, France. A central image of a man floating underwater fully clothed in a black pool is flanked on the left by an image of a young woman giving birth and, on the right, by an old woman in the process of dying. The three images together form a triptych based on the traditional Western altarpiece. The two side panels are documents of actual events. The central image is projected onto a translucent cloth scrim stretched in front of an empty white room, forming an indistinct luminous cloud of light behind and beyond the surface of the image. The projected image of the body underwater hovers in midair, part material, part immaterial, held in fragile suspension before an indistinct, shadowy space between birth and death.
Nantes Triptych, 1992
Video/sound installation
Edition 1: Fonds national d’art contemporain, Commande publique conçue pour le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, Ministère de la Culture, Paris, France. A central image of a man floating underwater fully clothed in a black pool is flanked on the left by an image of a young woman giving birth and, on the right, by an old woman in the process of dying. The three images together form a triptych based on the traditional Western altarpiece. The two side panels are documents of actual events. The central image is projected onto a translucent cloth scrim stretched in front of an empty white room, forming an indistinct luminous cloud of light behind and beyond the surface of the image. The projected image of the body underwater hovers in midair, part material, part immaterial, held in fragile suspension before an indistinct, shadowy space between birth and death.