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VOOM Portraits by Robert Wilson (USA)
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October 02 - November 11
Ekaterina Cultural Fund 
 Over the past two years, Robert Wilson, one of the most exciting and influential innovators in theater, art and design, has been working with VOOM HD Networks as an Artist-in-Residence to create the VOOM Portraits. These stunning works of art, so far numbering over thirty, have captured superstars and royalty, ordinary people and extraordinary animals, in a series of high-definition video portraits. Each VOOM Portrait is a set piece developed by Wilson in collaboration with his subjects, and draws inspiration from movies, art, history and more. For example, Winona Ryder is a character “Winnie” from the play “Happy Days” by Samuel Beckett; the portrait of HRH Princess Caroline of Hanover is inspired by her mother, Grace Kelly’s, role in “Rear Window,” as well as by the 19th century portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent; Willem Dafoe is a monstrous creature from a horror movie.
Presented in infinite loops, the VOOM Portraits seem at first glance to be traditional still portraits. But then, the sitters perform a simple act - a small movement, a blink, a tap of the foot—and the experience of watching them changes entirely. The portraits also include individual soundtracks, from musicians including Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Bernard Hermann, Michael Galasso, Big Black, Bach as interpreted by Glenn Gould, Hans Peter Kuhn and Ethel Merman.
As Robert Wilson explains: “They can be seen in museum spaces. They can be seen in subway stops. They can be seen in places where people are queuing in airports. They could be on the face of a wristwatch. They could be on TV. They could be an image in your home. They can be hanging on a wall. They could be in a fireplace – the way we have a fire. On a wall at home, they can be like a window – a window that shows us another world. It’s something very personal. It’s a document of our time. They are what I call portraits.
A native of Waco, Texas, Wilson was educated at the University of Texas and arrived in New York in 1963 to attend Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. Soon thereafter Wilson set to work with his Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds and together with his company developed his first signature works including King of Spain (1969), Deafman Glance (1970), The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973), and A Letter for Queen Victoria (1974). Regarded as a leader in Manhattan's then-burgeoning downtown art scene, Wilson turned his attention to large-scale opera and, with Philip Glass, created the monumental Einstein on the Beach (1976) which achieved world-wide acclaim and altered conventional notions of a moribund form. Of Wilson's artistic career, Susan Sontag has added “it has the signature of a major artistic creation. I can't think of any body of work as large or as influential.”
In collaboration with internationally renowned writers and performers, Wilson created landmark original works that were featured regularly at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Der Berliner Ensemble, the Schaub?hne in Berlin, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Salzburg Festival, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. At the Schaub?hne he created Death Destruction & Detroit (1979) and Death Destruction & Detroit II (1987); and at the Thalia he presented the groundbreaking musical works The Black Rider (1991) and Alice (1992). He has also applied his striking formal language to the operatic repertoire including Parsifal in Hamburg (1991), Houston (1992), and Los Angeles (2005); The Magic Flute (1991), Madame Butterfly (1993); and Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1998 & 2006).
Wilson recently completed an entirely new production, based on an epic poem from Indonesia, entitled I La Galigo, which toured extensively and appeared at the Lincoln Center Festival in the summer of 2005. Wilson continues to direct revivals of his most celebrated productions, including The Black Rider in London, San Francisco, Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles; The Temptation of St. Anthony in New York and Barcelona; Erwartung in Berlin; Madama Butterfly at the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow; and Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at Le Ch?telet in Paris.
 Wilson's practice is firmly rooted in the fine arts and his drawings, furniture designs, and installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Extensive retrospectives have been presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He has mounted installations at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, London's Clink Street Vaults, and the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao. His extraordinary tribute to Isamu Noguchi has been exhibited recently at the Seattle Art Museum and his installation of the Guggenheim's Giorgio Armani retrospective have traveled to London, Rome and Tokyo.
Wilson's numerous awards and honors include an Obie award for direction, the Golden Lion for sculpture from the Venice Biennale, the 3rd Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the Premio Europa award from Taormina Arte, two Guggenheim Fellowship awards, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship award, a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, the Golden Lion for Sculpture from the Venice Biennale, election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, and named as Commandeur des arts et des letters by the French Minister of Culture.
Find out more about Robert Wilson at his official website.
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