Swiss Bank Julius Baer is donating ‘Glacier Dreams’ by Refik Anadol to the Kunsthaus Zürich

AI, Big Data, and the quantified self: digital transformation is one of the greatest challenges of our times. Computers and new technologies are affecting every aspect of our lives. The Kunsthaus is rising to that challenge, too, using bold experimentation to reflect on the artistic potential and social impact of media technologies.

Refik Anadol (b. 1985 in Istanbul, lives in Los Angeles) is one of the leading pioneers of AI-based art. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has given a prominent place to his work ‘Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations’ and acquired it for its permanent collection. Anadol’s art has been shown at venues including Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in exhibitions at, for example, London’s Serpentine Gallery in spring 2024.

In his spectacular piece ‘Glacier Dreams’, Anadol ventures a step further, using AI to engage with one of the most pressing issues of our time – climate change. ‘Glacier Dreams’ is a multi-sensory AI artwork commissioned by Julius Baer as part of the bank’s NEXT initiative launched in 2022, which promotes new forms of cultural production at the intersection of the arts, science, and technology, and encourages the exploration of megatrends. To make this piece, the artist combined existing as well as his own glacier data from an expedition to Iceland and, using AI, created an experience of melting ice beyond traditional glacier research, making climate change compellingly tangible. The work will be on show in the Chipperfield building of the Kunsthaus from 18 January 2025.

For Julius Baer, the donation is an expression of its close ties to its home city of Zurich and its desire to offer Kunsthaus visitors a unique experience through an extraordinary work of art.

Ann Demeester, Director of the Kunsthaus Zürich, says: ‘We would like to thank Bank Julius Baer for this important gift. In the past, the Kunsthaus has already led the way in acquiring new media art for its video and film collection. This generous donation complements our permanent collection and offers our visitors a striking, cutting-edge work of digital art.’