Dom Panorama Utrecht-Ultra Vision-Centraal Museum

Over the course of four seasons, Hans Wilschut creates four panoramas from Utrecht’s Dom Tower. With these sweeping views, he connects historic Utrecht to the city of the future and shows how Utrecht relates to the world around it. The result is a view of the city as the human eye could never perceive it all at once. Each panorama is constructed from sixty to ninety images, taken from three different heights of the tower, at 40, 70, and 95 metres. This gives the image a simultaneously monumental and layered quality, while remaining exceptionally sharp into the distance. Ultra Vision thus becomes a contemporary cityscape in which the classical panorama takes on a new, modern form.

Like the seventeenth century painter Pieter Saenredam, known for his precise depictions of cityscapes and church interiors, Wilschut brings together different perspectives and subtly adjusts them. His background as a painter remains tangible throughout. He does not look merely in a documentary way, but also constructively, with attention to composition, space, and coherence.

Hans Wilschut’s Dom panorama is part of the project Stadsgezichten. Utrecht in transitie, a series of twelve photographic commissions by the Foundation for Urban Photography Utrecht about the city’s current change of scale. The photo series are on view this summer at Het Utrechts Archief, the Centraal Museum, and Kunstliefde.

See also the documentary about the making of the work, created by John Twigt and Pascale Wielenga.

4 March 2016 to 21 August 2016

Centraal Museum Utrecht
Agnietenstraat 1
3512 XA Utrecht
Telefoon: +31 (0)30 236 23 10
https://www.centraalmuseum.nl