Raumwelten (Space Worlds)

Tiepolo’s famous ceiling paintings in Würzburg were on show in the Zurich exhibition as part of a video work by Myriam Thyes. The various realisations of the idea of spatiality by the eleven artists included the media of audio, video, computer drawings, painting, object, installation and music performance.

The exhibition theme begins with the ‘Copernican revolution’. Tiepolo’s ceiling paintings appear to us as a visible expression of the change in world views and the depiction of the cosmos, expanding architectural space into immensity. Bernini and Borromini had already moved in this direction with their dizzying dome constructions, but Tiepolo was already creating virtual spaces, as it were. With the new pictorial media such as the camera obscura, photography, the photogram and later film, technological prerequisites were created to sharpen the view of the universe, to gain more adequate possibilities of representation through optics and movement than with the limited laws of painting. The computer, with programmes genuinely committed to virtuality, has opened up insights into the macro- and microcosm that correspond to today’s knowledge of physics. This gives rise to completely new visual worlds that no longer follow the real laws of space and enable and demand completely new perceptions. This exhibition is dedicated to these still tentative forays into a visual nirvana of truly unlimited possibilities, which begins with a homage to Venice and Würzburg and anticipates a future that is only just beginning to become visible, where technology and visual art are reconciled and fertilised.
Guido Magnaguagno, curator