Frustrated Actions and Futile Gestures @ Blain Southern

London´s Blain|Southern gallery & Bill Viola have a good track of successful collaborations,  and for their latest production the American video artist is bringing nine new works to the central gallery in “Frustrated Actions and Futile Gestures“. 

Created between 2012 and 2013, both on location and in the artist’s studio in Southern California, the exhibition presents three distinct bodies of works; the Frustrated Actions, the Mirage and the Water Portraits series. Through these works, Viola engages with complex aspects of human experience, including mortality, transience and our persistent, yet ultimately futile attempts to truly and objectively understand ourselves and the meaning of our brief lives.

On one side four works for the Frustrated Actions series which engage with ideas relating to the subconscious, the perception of ‘self’ and the ephemerality of life. In Man Searching for Immortality/Woman Searching for Eternity (2013) for example, a man and woman in the later stages of their lives emerge out of the darkness, pausing to explore their own naked bodies with torches, a daily routine search for disease and decay.

Four works from the Mirage series too: Ancestors (2012), The Encounter (2012), Walking on the Edge (2012) and Inner Passage (2013), were recorded at El Mirage – a six-mile long, dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert. Presented in horizontal and vertical formats, they portray figures from a distance through the distorting haze of a mirage, becoming increasingly visible as they walk towards the camera. Shot in high definition and slowed down, the vast arid landscape takes centre stage, as the travellers navigate the strong winds and the searing heat of the desert.

And finally, The Dreamers (2013), which consists of seven individual screens, which depict underwater portraits of people who appear to be sleeping. Presented in the gallery on the lower-ground floor, and accompanied by the gentle sounds of water, the viewer is led to feel as if they themselves are submerged with these figures. In this spiritual, immersive subterranean environment, ultimate interpretation is left for the viewer to define, through the lens of their own experiences.

Video art in its purest form opening next Wednesday and running until late July. More info this way.