Viola is a photographer who’s work is taken all underwater, in order to create sublime imagery.Viola was born  in1951 and is a contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness, which are experiences deemed as sublime, rather than what i am focusing on as emotions. 

Viola has been referred to as “the Rembrandt of the video age”, his work pays homage not only to the famous Dutch master but to the tradition of creating large-scale works of art that draw the viewer into beautifully painted images and compelling narratives. There is often a spiritual component to his work, with elements of Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism underpinning themes considered universal: birth, death, love, sex, grief, and redemption. Viola considers the “phenomena of sense perception” as a path to self-awareness; therefore, his work is a blend of experimental video art and sound, including avant-garde music performance. He was one of the earliest artists to explore the potential of the video camera, which in its most basic form in the 1970s only vaguely resembles the sophisticated devices of today.

Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.His work is also so abstract, he uses water in such a way to loose and distort the way you see and can think what is real, the images being flipped and water used to show the inability to show a surface.

Stations comprises five video projections, each displaying a nude figure suspended in water, accompanied by a lulling soundtrack of underwater gurgles and murmurs. Floating heads-down, the figures drift slowly out of the image frames. Their reflections in the polished slabs of granite placed at the foot of each screen give the impression of figures swimming in pools of black liquid. The thirteenth-century Persian poet Jahal al-Din Rumi, a favorite author of the artist, proclaimed: “With every moment a world is born and dies. And know that for you, with every moment comes death and renewal.” Likewise, in Stations there is no ending or beginning—every instant is a meditation on the continual cycles of life, death, and rebirth.

The videos are individually titled Departing Angel, Birth Angel, Fire Angel, Ascending Angel and Creation Angel. Each video features a clothed male figure rising out of and plunging into a pool of water at irregular intervals, as well as hovering over it in between these movements. In all five films the action is presented in slow motion, and in each one the man and the water are shown in a single colour that changes over time in each film between a range of blue and green tones and a dark, blood red. These hues are accentuated by contrasting areas of bright white and pitch black. The five videos play simultaneously, but they are not synchronised and each is repeated on a continuous loop, so that the figures are seen repeatedly moving in and out of the water. Each projection is accompanied by an individual audio track featuring underwater noises that gradually reach a crescendo that culminates in ‘a sudden explosion of light and sound’ as the figure emerges from the waterThe work’s title suggests that the five figures are angels who have a specific relationship to the new millennium, which had just begun when this installation was being filmed and edited. As such, the work may invite reflection on the state of religious or spiritual belief at the dawn of a new era. Viola has often drawn on the history of religious art in his work, and has sought to evoke strong spiritual feelings through his installations’ imagery and sound. He has stated that Five Angels for the Millennium produces ‘an enveloping emotional experience like that of a church’ and that it is about what ‘you cannot see, the things that are not on the surface’  has to do with an acknowledgement or awareness or recognition that there is something above, beyond, below, beneath what’s in front of our eyes, what our daily life is focused on. There’s another dimension that you just know is there, that can be a source of real knowledge, and the quest for connecting with that and identifying that is the whole impetus for me to cultivate these experiences and to make my work. And, on a larger scale, it is also the driving force behind all religious endeavours. There is an unseen world out there and we are living in it.

My favourite elements to his work are the surreal way he captures water as a moving alive elements and also uses colour to enhance the life  of the image itself. I think Viola will definitely be the key one my inspiration for the following of my shoots, his methods and finished works are so creative and highly curated and not only forms successful compositions but also surreal elements combines within the themes of the sublime in order to create a physical story and reinactment of life values, concentrating on pleasure and pain.