Faces to watch 2003

Bill Viola

Video artist

The mystery of human consciousness has been at the center of Viola’s art for 30 years. Thirteen video works, all new since the L.A. artist’s terrific midcareer survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1997, make up the international touring show “Bill Viola: The Passions,” organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum (Jan. 24-Apr. 27). The show includes the Getty-commissioned “Emergence,” a film transferred to high-definition video and based on a painting of the Pieta by early 15th century Florentine master Masolino.

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Laura Owens

Painter

L.A. artist Owens has sprinted to the head of the international pack of a younger generation of artists with deceptively casual canvases that freely mix Western and Eastern traditions (English embroidery and Chinese landscapes, to cite one surprising concoction). Plus, when she paints big, her work addresses a viewer the way good installation art does: as an active, physical participant. Owens’ first solo museum show, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (March 16-June 22), will feature 20 paintings and 15 drawings.

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Lee Bontecou

Sculptor

They said it couldn’t be done -- but it apparently has been: “Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective” begins its national tour at the UCLA Hammer Museum (Oct. 7, 2003-Jan. 12, 2004). Steel, wire and canvas wall-reliefs from the 1960s by the famously reclusive Pennsylvania artist were the focus of a small gem of an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art 10 years ago. Bontecou brought to a remarkable, feminist-inspired conclusion an otherwise largely uninspired genre of Abstract Expressionist sculpture in that work, but she’s shown rarely in the last 25 years -- making this exhibition the focus of much curiosity.

-- Christopher Knight