Walk with Hilma af Klint: AR brings works by the mystic mother of abstraction to London's Regents Park - Art Newspaper

More than a period aft she completed her chef d’oeuvre—193 abstract canvases known collectively arsenic Paintings for the Temple—Hilma af Klint is having a big, multi-dimensional moment, 1 larger adjacent than erstwhile the 2018 survey of her paintings astatine the Guggenheim Museum successful New York broke attendance records for the institution, shipped 100,000 copies of the catalogue and sold retired the exhibition’s creator merchandise.

Af Klint, the mystic Swedish parent of early-modern abstraction, whose pioneering enactment remained unrecognised successful her lifetime, is the taxable of a caller biography, by Julia Voss, and of the seventh and last measurement of a catalogue raisonné (both published this month); of a biopic, Hilma, opening astatine cinemas connected 28 October; and of a virtual world (VR) experience, Hilma af Klint: The Temple, which launched this week.

The VR portion is produced by the London-based extended world workplace Acute Art, arsenic is an augmented world app, Hilma af Klint Walk, which allows visitors to “place” and presumption 18 integer incarnations of the artist’s large-scale pictures on the way betwixt Frieze London and Frieze Masters successful Regent’s Park. In December, the VR acquisition volition beryllium presented successful a room-size installation projected connected elephantine screens astatine the caller Outernet music, creation and civilization centre, successful Charing Cross Road, cardinal London. In April 2023, Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian opens astatine Tate Modern, focusing connected however the 2 artists moved, individually, from a figurative survey of forms successful quality to the “form-ality” of Abstract art.

Hilma af Klint's The Temple (2022), virtual world conceived by Stolpe Publishing and Acute Art Courtesy of Stolpe Publishing and Acute Art

The Temple VR portion is simply a “dream project” for Daniel Birnbaum, the creator manager of Acute Art, who curated Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen at Serpentine Galleries successful London, successful 2016, portion helium was manager of the Moderna Museet, successful Stockholm. He is besides co-editor, with Kurt Almqvist, of the Af Klint catalogue raisonné, published by Bokförlaget Stolpe. Birnbaum says that helium and the squad astatine Stolpe respect the VR portion arsenic the “eighth volume” of their monumental, 1,500-work catalogue.

Spiritual spirals

Af Klint, who dabbled successful spiritualism and automatic drafting successful a radical of Stockholm women artists called the Five, followed Rudolf Steiner, the philosopher of spiritual science, and the mystic Madame Blavatsky into the fashionable, well-funded Theosophical movement. She demonstrated a Theosophist’s interest with geometric and spiral forms successful the wide of diagrammatic Temple pictures that she worked connected aft being asked successful a séance successful 1906 by a “High Master” to wantonness her world attack to art.

Hilma af Klint: The Temple, delightfully framed and paced by Rodrigo Marques, Acute Art’s originative technologist, with an ambient soundtrack by Andrew Sheriff, takes the spectator connected a dreamlike formation done Af Klint’s corkscrew spirals and gridded lattices, up and down Guggenheim-esque ramps wherever the artist’s brilliantly coloured paintings materialise and animate; and crossed a sunflower-packed island, based connected a existent one, betwixt Copenhagen and Malmö, wherever the creator erstwhile hoped to physique a temple.

Hilma af Klint's The Temple (2022), augmented reality, captured connected the Broadwalk, Regent's Park, London. Conceived by Stolpe Publishing and Acute Art. Courtesy of Stolpe Publishing and Acute Art

During Frieze London, the nationalist volition beryllium capable to presumption the VR acquisition astatine the euphony and creation venue Koko, successful Camden, northbound London, connected 1 of 27 Meta Quest 2 VR headsets dotted astir its auditorium. The modulation betwixt levels parallels the VR user’s modulation successful The Temple from the Milky Way to the world and back.

Birnbaum says that the shell-like, spiral-shaped Guggenheim Museum was perfect for showing Af Klint’s paintings. (The museum’s founding curator, Hilla Rebay, who worked intimately with Frank Lloyd Wright connected its design, was different Theosophist.) VR, with its capableness to show aggregate works successful ever-evolving integer temples, is, helium says, the mean that Af Klint’s enactment has agelong been waiting for.

• Hilma Af Klint Walk, successful AR: Acute Art app; and Broadwalk, Regent’s Park, until 16 October

• Hilma Af Klint: The Temple, successful headset VR: Koko Theatre, 1A Camden High St, London, 13 October; Swedenborg House, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London, 15-16 October; successful room-size VR, astatine Outernet, 138 Charing Cross Rd, London, each Sunday, 11 December 2022-5 February 2023