Bill Viola, a pioneer in new media, video and installation art including immersive exhibits that drew thousands around the world, has died at age 73, his official website announced Saturday.
He died at his home in Long Beach, California, after a long struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Viola was known for creating powerful video installations often dealing with the extremes of human emotion and experience — of birth, death and consciousness.
His “decades-long engagement with video proved vital in establishing the medium as an integral part of contemporary art,” ArtNews said on social media platform X.
Viola was “an alchemist of the moving image who exploded small moments into tableaux of staggering depth,” art critic Brian Kelly said, also on X.
A New York native, Viola came of age as video systems were evolving, and in experimenting with the new technologies, “I gradually realized that …