Vanishing II

About Stephen Haley

BACK TO THE FUTURE The Australian artist Stephen Haley bridges the discoveries of the Renaissance with the twenty-first century. The concept of the vanishing point and thus central perspective was the beginning of the development of the modern, technology-dominated world of imagery. In early Renaissance vedute, the buildings of spatially well-ordered cities were viewed with a sober gaze. Haley

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The Australian artist Stephen Haley bridges the discoveries of the Renaissance with the twenty-first century. The concept of the vanishing point and thus central perspective was the beginning of the development of the modern, technology-dominated world of imagery. In early Renaissance vedute, the buildings of spatially well-ordered cities were viewed with a sober gaze. Haley constructs a congenial image of the strictly ordered structures of the worlds in which we live and work today. With the help of 3D technology he is able to create seductive illusions, which he simultaneously interrupts with repetitions and insertions of real urban panoramas. It is the visual art of interstice that allows the modern world to appear in well organized basic themes. Haley’s works, which he calls “virtual photographs,” are scientifically based, visual commentary on current and future developments.

Haley has a doctoral degree from the University of Melbourne, where he teaches art history. In his academic work he has dealt extensively with the concepts of society and reflection. His ideas and designs today assume a network that encompasses the internet and other networks and dependencies of modern man: “As the mesh envelops us all, it has the capacity to restrict but also to connect us all within its net. It is capable of oppression as well as giddying beauty – it depends on the operator.”

True space is, in Haley’s words, increasingly designed according to models in virtual space. “The mirror has become the metasign for our age. We occupy a historical point where the real has vanished into simulation.” The scholar’s theses find their congenial correlation in his almost unsettlingly beautiful images of a determined future.

Horst Klöver

VITA

Stephan Haley was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1961. He studied art, history, and philosophy at the Victorian College of Arts and at the University of Melbourne, where he also received his doctoral degree for the work Mirror as Metasign: Contemporary Culture and the Mirror Land.