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Yadegar Asisi – Architect of illusions

Even as a student, Asisi was fascinated by the possibilities of giving three dimensions to two-dimensional images.  What is the relationship between architecture and decorative painting? How are spatial impressions, optical illusions and illusions created with the help of geometry or views portrayed from below?     The exactitude of perspective interests him just as much as the various forms of illusionist painting or the amazing method of anamorphosis (perspective distortion).

He studied the great masters of perspective in detail – Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea Mantegna. Even when he became a freelance architect in the 1980s, Yadegar Asisi worked on stage sets and architectural simulations, drawing them on paper in spite of computer-assisted calculations. Many public and private clients turned to him as the specialist for “three-dimensionality”.  Asisi received countless awards for his concise and artistic designs.

In 2003, the architect Daniel Libeskind won the competition for the design of the reconstruction of the area surrounding the World Trade Center in New York with a panorama by Asisi. Much acclaim followed the panoramic exhibition »Berlin 2005 – CityVision« in the year 1995, which was created in cooperation with »Stern« magazine. Since 2003, Asisi has devoted most of his artistic activity to his panorama houses in Leipzig and Dresden.

The magical power of vision

Born in 1955 in Vienna, the son of Persian emigrants, Yadegar Asisi spent his childhood and youth in Halle and Leipzig. He soon discovered and perfected the use of pencils and crayons to paint his “magic pictures”.  Even today, five decades later, he is never without paper and pencil, always ready to perceive and capture the many facets of the world to the full, in spite of computers and digital cameras.

He sees this as a question of visual culture. Asisi is convinced: “The individual power of vision is a primary source of knowledge. It is one of the prerequisites for an individual approach to our environment, and as such the basis for the development of self-confidence.”

Asisi, who chooses to live in Berlin, discovered the medium of the panorama at the beginning of the 1990s. After working on the illusionistic stage designs, anamorphoses and architectural simulations mentioned above, with the panorama he had finally found the form of artistic expression that united all his intentions.

Paradoxically the medium, which is widely considered to be a thing of the past, is perfect for the multimedia age for quite a different reason: it consists merely of a picture. Amongst the flood of information to which we are subjected on a daily basis in the modern world, it is no longer the availability of knowledge that is the problem, but choosing what we consider relevant.

At asisi GmbH in Berlin the artist Yadegar Asisi, formerly a Professor of Free Representation at the architectural department of the Technische Fachhochschule in Berlin, continues to build his reputation as a specialist for visual culture.

He considers the popular historical artistic medium of the panorama to be the ideal instrument for the promotion of visual culture. Why? Because a person visiting a panorama – however old he is and whatever background he comes from – finds it impossible to resist its effect. “As soon as you enter the interior of the huge circular picture, you seem to become a part of it; you develop feelings as a result of what you see”. Modern media science calls this process “immersion” – being immersed in an artificial world via the elimination of spatial barriers. This also touches the viewer on an emotional level. The hectic everyday world outside fades away into the background, and slowly the viewer gives himself up entirely to the magical powers of vision. As he contemplates at his leisure, more and more details emerge in the painted image of reality. The panorama not only provides a moment of peace, but slows down the pace of the world for a while.