The SCHIRN is presenting a major exhibition devoted to the cultural history of vision.


Dioramas are scenes in display cases set against a painted semicircular background, which the viewer observes through a glass panel.



DIORAMA. INVENTING ILLUSION

Until 21 January 2018

The SCHIRN presents a major exhibition dedicated to the cultural history of vision. It focuses on the diorama, which is used to reconstruct and realistically stage events, stories, and habitats with the aid of various means. Invented in the nineteenth century by the French painter and photography pioneer Louis Daguerre as a playhouse enlivened with light effects, it, as a glass showcase became the presentation form par excellence for natural history museums.
The diorama has been a crucial source of inspiration to this day: Numerous artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries address questions of staged vision in their works by questioning and dissolving the illusion of a reconstructed reality.
The exhibition presents impressive dioramas and works by such artists as Mark Dion, Isa Genzken, Robert Gober, Mathieu Mercier, Kent Monkman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Jeff Wall.

The exhibition was organized by the SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT in collaboration with the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

EXHIBITION FILM

CATALOG

Tip. In addition to the wide range of dioramas portrayed, the catalogue texts are unbelievably diverse. They range from the detailed analyses by Carl Akeley, the inventor of the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, to a letter by Anselm Kiefer to the curator and Donna Haraway’s famous text on the “teddy bear patriarchy”

SUPPORTED BY

SCHIRN FREUNDE

MEDIA PARTNER

ARTE