In her artistic practice, Elín Hansdóttir transforms spaces and shakes up the sensory experience of space as well as orientation within it. With the exhibition "What happens when nothing happens?" at the Ernst Schering Foundation, she challenges human perception, using the possibilities of virtual reality for the first time.
Elín Hansdóttir explores the question of how images and digital media influence our perception of a concrete space, in this case the exhibition space of the Ernst Schering Foundation. To trace this, the artist splits the project space into a kaleidoscope of spaces of different character. There is the physical exhibition space, which appears so dark that it can hardly be grasped as such. Within it are five photographs that further complicate the formation of a concrete conception of space and encourage a subtle uncertainty: are space and image related, and if so, how?
The VR installation, a result of a collaborative project between the artist and the Ukrainian 3D artist Ihor Sokolov and Matthew McGinity, Professor of Immersive Media Design at the TU Dresden, finally takes the audience on a walk through chambers, cabinets and tunnels.
Space becomes a phenomenon that emerges and disintegrates again in this exhibition. It is real and virtual, open and obstructed, light and dark, always in flux.
Supporting program
DIALOG - 25.04.2023
In conversation, the artists talk about their interest in questions of human perception and the relationship between reality and virtuality.