On the occasion of the Reformation Anniversary 2017, Deichtorhallen Hamburg show a comprehensive exhibition by American artist Bill Viola (*1951 in New York) featuring 13 video installations created since 1992.

His work examines core themes of human life – birth, emotion, spirituality, love, and death. The artist is particularly interested in the mystical traditions of Christianity, Zen Buddhism and Islam. Reflected in ­almost all his video installations, there is a spiritual ­openness that addresses the viewers' bodies as a ­medium for borderline experiences, which contributes to their impressive aura. At times, their ultra-slow motion aesthetics allude to aesthetics influenced by the iconog­raphy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance – with archaic force, yet formally highly sophisticated, these unique images convey the experience of the sublime and spiritual using the pictorial language of the global-ized 21st century.

After numerous projects and exhibi­tions, such as at the Grand Palais in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as US representative at the 46th Venice Biennale, and currently at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Bill Viola is today one of the most important contemporary artists, and regarded as the leading re­presentative of video art.