Rembrant Hoogstraten Ausstellung - Kunsthistorische Museum

Serenella Zoppolat

The exhibition design for "Rembrandt - Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion", held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna from October 8, 2024, to January 12, 2025, creates a dialogue between 17th-century paintings and the museum's grand halls. The exhibition, which for the first time brought together the works of the master Rembrandt and his talented pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten, explored the art of visual illusion and optical deception in Dutch painting.
Inside the imposing halls of the museum, the space is organized by a series of large, 7.5-meter-high self-supporting panels that rise along the historic walls without ever touching them. These large vertical structures are suspended from the existing picture rails and supported by an internal core of steel and cross-laminated timber (CLT). In this way, the panels divide the large rooms and organize the flow of the exhibition. To visually distinguish the two artists without relying on written signs, brass-colored lines were placed above the artworks—vertical lines for Rembrandt and horizontal lines for Hoogstraten. Combined with a subtle play of light and shadow behind the panels, this design successfully creates distinct "groups" of works.
The colors and materials were also carefully chosen to enhance the masterpieces on loan from international collections: the panels feature soft, matte surfaces that absorb artificial light and eliminate reflections, putting the spotlight entirely on the displayed paintings. Furthermore, all the texts in the main rooms were created by illuminating transparent Plexiglas panels. In this way, the words themselves are made of light, translating the ephemeral quality of the paintings onto the informational supports.

Project Gallery

Rembrandt

Rem (4).jpg

Rembrandt

Baustelle

Detail

Details

Serenella Zoppolat AT

http://www.architettura21.com
Rudolfsaplatz, 12/4A | 1010 Wien