"Meeting 2 of my favorite artists_BillViola & Tim Hawkinson"

What an amazing week of openings,on back to back nights I had the rare privilege to meet 2 of my favorite artists. On Wednesday May 2nd 07. at the NYEhaus gallery in Grammercy Park I got to meet Tim Hawkinson. I had the opportunity to tell him that in 1996,I was visiting NYC deciding to move to the city,and saw his solo show at the ACE gallery in Tribeca. It was a quintessential and defining moment of the trip to experience this show.The monumental scale, clever use of materials,and distinctly unique style of low-tech engineering for the purposes of art were awe-inspiring to me, and drove home the fact that without living here I would continually miss shows of such magnitude, I’ve lived in NY ever since.Although he did mention “but I am from L.A”,which i found interesting. Moving from Florida to LA just wasn’t a drastic enough change of lifestyle, but being bi-coastal now sounds fabulous,watch out Tim we might be interfacing more often in the future.
On Thursday May 3rd, at the James Cohan gallery opening for the “Works of the TRISTAN project” by Bill Viola I was excited to have the opportunity to meet Bill Viola. Thanks to artist/curator/PAM founder Lee Wells[pictured left w B.Viola], Chris Borkowski and I got a direct introduction to Bill. He was an incredibly sincere and warm man, it was instantly known he would rather have dialog with some artists than to be in dialog with the myriad of dealers circling him. He told us an interesting anectdote of an interface with Michael Snow, whom he had greatly admired,whilst installing a video piece with drips of water in the Kitchen when he was in his early to mid twenties. Bill Viola has a true talent of being able to add the spiritual properties of humanity to his video works. When I saw his piece where the dying mother is reflected on the screen of the newborn daughter, I was amazed. Television screens inherently have such a sterile quality,but Bill made them poignant, human,and conceptual_ dealing with the very nature of existence,life and death. In all the Hollywood graphic violence and death scenes on television and movies, not one of them compares even closely to the emotional effect this semi-low tech installation held within. Bill Viola truely shows us through the medium of video art, an artists ability to create works that transcend the medium and drive home important messages of sheer existence. I sincerely hope that in the future I will have time to have more in-depth dialog with Bill and maybe even collaborate on a work of art one day.