What is currently in vogue as an escape from reality between the conquest of space and the virtualization of everyday life has spurred and inspired artists for centuries: The creation and design of worlds and the artistic examination of social, real and imaginary spaces. Time and again, social developments have been anticipated and influenced in a lasting way. And so current trends such as the various metaverse fantasies are by no means as revolutionary as they like to claim. Concepts and ideas for the metaverse have always emerged as utopian-dystopian answers to human escapism, which manifests itself in a mixture of enthusiasm for science, technological progress, and artistic creation.
Meta.space — Raumvisionen (Spatial Visions) presents a selection of interdisciplinary and intermedial positions that are negotiated as a dialogue between “old” art and contemporary work. The framework of content ranges from the thematization of early painterly solutions to pictorial spatial problems from the 15th century onward and the spatiality of sculptural works to the sensory, scientific, and technical development of spaces and the recording and penetration of social spaces. It finally culminates in the examination of a wide variety of world concepts. It not only questions their artistic and social implications, but also critically examines the dystopian as well as utopian potential of current metaspace concepts.
