ABSTRACT
Using the high-tech apparatus of modern image-making – high-definition video, plasma screens, and manipulations of light and time – the work of American artist Bill Viola is rooted in the theological tradition of transcendent mystical experience and spiritual self-concentration. In dealing with the idea of representing the invisible, this chapter argues that Viola’s art converges with postmodern notions of the “unrepresentable,” theologically invoking the idea of seeing/hearing/experiencing God in “glimpses” or “traces,” but never knowing God completely. The apophatic description of God as an abstract experience, not conceptually definable in terms of space and location, nor confinable to conventions of time – God as transcendent of Being – echoes St. Paul’s description of the “Unknown God” in Acts 17–23, and can be theorized within the context of “unknowability” and the sublime. This chapter seeks to define, through the selected work of Bill Viola, the theological sublime as an aesthetic of revelation.
