Dive into a bath of polystyrene balls, balloons or feathers, get lost in a labyrinth of mirrors (by Christian Megert) or wander through an elastic space (designed by Gianni Colombo): this is what the exhibition at Lausanne’s Musée des Beaux-Arts offers us, the first to trace the emergence of immersive art between 1949 and 1969, before it became one of the main forms of expression in the art field from the 1990s onwards.
From Lucio Fontana’s “Environnement spatial avec lumière noire”, inaugurated in 1949, to James Turrell’s immaterial spaces (Shallow Space Construction, 1968-1969), Pinot Gallizio’s “Caverne de l’anti-matière” (1958-59) and Judy Chicago’s “Feather Room” – a luminous space filled with feathers, created to the delight of visitors in 1966 – fourteen environments take us back to the roots of this art form, which aims to go beyond the materiality of the work.
Going beyond the genres and movements involved (from performance art to happening, from Italian “Spatialism” to the American “Light and Space” movement, via kinetic art and the Zero group), the exhibition allows us to relive the “totalising experiences” of what Fontana called “spatial art”. With USCO (acronym for Company of Us) and their psychedelic “Fanflashtic” (1968), mixing lights, images and sounds, you can achieve “total sensory stimulation”, or, with Bruce Nauman and his “Sound Breaking Wall” (1969), succumb to the anguish of hearing a wall exhale while laughter and beating noises echo through the other walls of an improbable space…
« Immersion. Les origines : 1949-1969 »
Till March 3rd 2024
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne – Plateforme 10
16, place de la gare, 1003 Lausanne