Bill Viola at the Guggenheim Museum - New York - "Going Forth by Day" video exhibition

Going Forth by Day (2002), a title taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, is an ambitious, digital-image installation by video artist Bill Viola. Commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, Viola's newest cycle of birth, death and resurrection consists of five 35-minute sequences projected directly onto the gallery walls, the moving picture version of trecento frescoes. Played simultaneously, their soundtracks mixed freely with each other and with the ambient noise.

The first panel, the pulsating, womblike Fire Birth, the most abstract, suffers from the generic look of its fire and water imagery. The second, The Path, formulated as a long horizontal that takes up one entire wall, is a kind of Canterbury tale or pilgrim's progress with Buddhist overtones, as people of all ages, shapes and social ranks walk through the woods in endless procession. While easy to look at, the allegory, unfortunately, is too easy. The Deluge, the third and most dramatic section, takes place in front of a formal, Neo-Classical facade. Speeding up the previous panel's tempo, it shows people hurrying by, some stumbling in their haste, propelled, it seems, by a mounting anxiety. The culmination is a great rush of water pouring out of the building's windows and doors, tumbling hapless bodies onto the streets, sweeping them away with a force certain to recall the catastrophic events of Sept. 11.

The Voyage, based closely on Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel, is the fourth and most successful panel, conceived in memory of Viola's father, who died recently. It frames a dying, bedridden man in an open Renaissance structure, tenderly attended by a younger couple. Far below, in a simultaneous narrative, a boat is readied for departure, as an old woman, his wife, perhaps, directs the loading of their possessions. Ringed by distant mountains, the water is preternaturally serene and glassy smooth, as if it could be walked on, the light triumphantly clear and expectant, like the miraculous light of first morning. The events of the concluding panel, First Light, occur at dawn, as a group of rescue workers slowly pack up after an exhausting night; a woman waiting apprehensively is the focal point of the quietly distraught scene. As they fall asleep, like the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, a luminous apparition rises unnoticed out of the lake in front of them; curiously, it resembles an Oscar statuette, seductively, sleekly buff. While this is the most lavishly produced of his works to date--which may be the problem--Going Forth by Day lacks Viola's often breathtaking reconciliation between medium, image and message. We have learned to expect more from him.

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