With "THE CATHEDRAL OF MONET", Yadegar Asisi is breaking new ground in his oeuvre: for the first time, a panorama measuring 6 x 2 metres was painted in oil on canvas in his Berlin studio before being digitised in high resolution, printed and finally staged in the Panometer as a 360-degree installation. The printed large panorama has an almost three-dimensional effect: the structure of the canvas, brushstrokes and an enlarged application of paint through digitisation become the defining structure and transport the viewer into a 3,500 square metre oil painting.
The basis for the panorama was a famous series of panel paintings by Claude Monet, who painted the cathedral in Rouen in northern France several times under different lighting conditions. Asisi used one of these paintings as a starting point to transfer its lighting mood in all its complexity to the spatial painting.
With this project, Yadegar Asisi looks at the development of art under the influence of technology and social achievements. Impressionism marked the beginning of an era - in Asisi's words, the liberation of painting - which was accompanied by a completely free development of motifs, themes and painting techniques right up to the present day. The influence of technology, from photography at the time to today's AI models, has expanded the spectrum and the expressive possibilities of visual artists to this day. In the accompanying exhibition with around 100 works by Asisi, he confronts the tension between painting, craftsmanship and digitalisation, but above all his own sensory and world experience.
Background: Panoramas by Yadegar Asisi have been on display in the historic Gasometer since 2003. This is where the renaissance of panoramas began. In addition to Leipzig, the artist's panoramas can also be seen in Berlin, Dresden, Lutherstadt Wittenberg and Pforzheim. Further locations in Vienna and Constance are being planned.