Bill Viola, a seminal figure who expanded video into a medium of artistic expression, is featured in the retrospective exhibition Visions of Time at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń and the Tumult Foundation, Poland. Over the course of four decades, Viola has developed a distinctive oeuvre by integrating diverse media, including video, installation, and performance, with philosophical reflections. 

At the forefront of the rise of new media in the late 1970s, Viola traversed the boundaries between the real and the unreal, the material and the immaterial. By removing narratives and characters from the videos, he expanded the medium to explore universal human experiences. In doing so, his works—embracing religious iconography from East and West alongside timeless philosophical contemplation—evoke a sense of déjà vu, simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar.

The exhibition features 32 works of his major video installations. The Greeting (1995), which stretches a 45-second moment into 10 minutes of extreme slow motion, delicately captures subtle shifts in gesture, expression, and space as the flow of time becomes distorted. In Room for St. John of the Cross (1983), inspired by the spiritual experience of the 16th-century Spanish saint, St. John of the Cross, Viola amplifies the immersive experience through a minimalistic installation composed of a single window, an earthen floor, a small monitor, and the faint recitation of Spanish poetry. In addition, The Reflecting Pool (1977–1979), Incrementation (1996), and The Messenger (1996) are also on view to trace the artist’s pioneering practice in the course of media art.

This exhibition encompasses Bill Viola's unique visual language, in which video serves not merely as a tool for recording moments but as an expressive medium that transcends the boundaries of reality and time, interlacing surreal visual effects with an organic flow. Visions of Time runs through December 31.