Artist Asisi wants to look deeper

Mount Everest, a garden, New York shortly before the attack in 2001, the Battle of Leipzig: Yadegar Asisi has been inviting visitors into his meter-high round worlds for twenty years. In an interview with the German Press Agency, the artist says that the decisive factor is the resolution, the fascinating thing is the tranquillity. In the anniversary year, he is also announcing a very special insight into his work with a new exhibition.

"We had to invent a lot to realize the panoramas in this way," recalls the artist, who was born in Vienna in 1955 and grew up in Leipzig and Halle. One example is the thread used to attach the panoramas: "It has to be strong, but must not glitter and must be colorless." Another example? The fabrics. "At the very beginning, I used cotton fabric. Horrible. It made Mount Everest one and a half meters longer," says Asisi with a grin. Visitors were able to see the elongated highest mountain in the world in a rotunda - Asisi's first panorama - from May 2003 in a former gasometer in Leipzig.

It is not uncommon for years to pass before an idea is realized, says Asisi. "If I have a thought about a topic, it has to fascinate me at least the next day - or more likely the next few weeks." If he is convinced, it rarely happens that he and his team don't make a theme. "There's no stopping them."

With his art, he wants to create an emotional connection between people and the subjects, said Asisi. It is important to him that people come out of the panoramas asking questions. However, his task is not to initiate or even lead a discussion. "I can't even ask the question of guilt because things are so complex."

With the panoramas in former gasometers, Asisi created the term with which his name is mainly associated today: The Panometer. In addition to the one in Leipzig, others have been opened in Dresden, Pforzheim and Lutherstadt Wittenberg over the past two decades. In Berlin, Asisi showed the Wall - on an autumn day in West Berlin in the 1980s. A new Panometer is to be built in Constance. According to Asisi, his exhibitions have been visited by around twelve million people over the past 20 years.

Asisi is currently working on four new panoramas. An exhibition planned for next year will also provide a deeper insight into his skills: "Outside of the panoramas, I have an oeuvre that nobody really knows about. For example, I've been drawing since I was a child. But nobody is interested in that at the moment, because I am known for panoramas, so they will be shown."