Punto di Fuga [Vanishing Point] (2001),
Universitą Ca’ Foscari Venezia,
Venice, Italy
The idea of a vanishing point presupposes a viewer and a particular
relationship between the viewer and the work, issues which are central concerns to Sirlin
in her new media installations. As in all of Sirlin’s installations, Punto di Fuga redefines the interior and exterior spaces of its site by
suffusing them with the qualities of her painting. Because this work is installed in an entryway, the
viewer can actually pass through the image, assuming a different relationship to it on each side of the threshhold.
People passing through the door become part of the work. Sirlin’s transformation of a painting into
an architectural installation marks the transformative nature of passage over a threshhold, movement from
one state of being to another. The Italian word “fuga” evokes the concept of escape as well
as that of the perspectival vanishing. The doorway on which Sirlin’s image is installed is literally a
“point of escape”--from the street into the building, and vice-versa, from life outside the university to that within
it. Through her use of digital technology, Sirlin redefines painting as a three-dimensional medium in
which the viewer participates, thus allowing painting to escape from restrictive formal limitations and
modes of presentation.
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