Press Release

The Fondation Beyeler is pleased to premiere Little Room, a new virtual reality (VR) installation by American artist Jordan Wolfson (*1980). This immersive work, on display for the first time at the Fondation Beyeler, invites visitors to step into an experimental environment where they play a central role in the unfolding experience.

Upon entering the exhibition space, visitors are paired either with a companion of their choice or with a stranger, and after an individual 3D full-body scan, they are transported into a virtual space, within which, each participant sees themselves through the body of the other, leading to increasingly strange and disorienting physical and spatial distortions.

Little Room delves into the complex intersection of real, virtual, and imaginary realms. Wolfson’s work examines the darker aspects of the human experience while raising profound existential questions about consciousness, identity, and physical and intellectual negation. With Little Room the artist pushes the potential of VR to create a unique encounter that goes beyond conventional understandings of the medium.

Jordan Wolfson is known for his thought-provoking and unsettling works across various media. While he began as a video artist, his latest works span animatronics, robotics, virtual reality, holography, digital animation, and innovative wall-based pieces. Pulling intuitively from the world of advertising, the internet, and the technology industry, he produces ambitious and enigmatic narratives that frequently revolve around a series of invented, animated characters.

As part of a generation that redefined artistic possibilities through emerging digital media, Wolfson probes difficult, often controversial topics and themes that underlie American culture and contemporary society, offering a raw and immersive exploration of human vulnerabilities. His art challenges and disorients, often interrogating how we process images and information, and how technologies shape the way we think and perceive the world. Jordan Wolfson studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

The show is organized by Fondation Beyeler in partnership with LUMA Foundation and supported by the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation, the George Economou Collection, the AMA Collection as well as Sadie Coles HQ, Gagosian and David Zwirner.

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About the Artist

Jordan Wolfson (b. 1980, New York) is an American artist known for disturbing, technically sophisticated works that fuse animatronic sculpture, video, and virtual reality to probe violence, desire, and the ethics of looking. Working between Los Angeles, New York, and Europe, he has become one of the most closely watched artists of his generation for a series of highly mediated installations that confront viewers with grotesque spectacle and their own complicity. Signature works such as (Female Figure) (2014), Colored Sculpture (2016), and the virtual reality piece Real Violence (2017) have been widely discussed and protested in equal measure. Wolfson’s work has been presented at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Broad, Fondation Beyeler, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Brant Foundation, cementing his profile in both museum and market contexts.

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About the Gallery

The Fondation Beyeler is a museum of modern and contemporary art open 365 days a year. It is considered one of the world’s most beautiful museums. Its exhibitions of renowned artists of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have brought the museum international recognition and established it as one of the most popular art museums in Switzerland. The focus is the visitor’s personal and sensory experiences in encountering art and nature.

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