Matteo Zamagni presents Horror Vacui

“Horror Vacui”—meaning ‘fear of empty space’ or ‘fear of emptiness’—is the term used to describe the filling of the entire surface of a space or an artwork with detail. A reflection on our alienation from nature and our destruction of it in the name of expansion and hyper-development, Matteo Zamagni’s film juxtaposes the Earth’s untouched lands with human beings’ artificial settlements by means of computer-aided designs, real images and digital reconstructions of forests, mountainous landscapes and overpopulated metropolitan areas. The film also references Buddhist philosophy through the idea that human beings are limited in grasping the “true nature of things and events”, and how everything is interdependent and constantly changing.

Matteo Zamagni is an Italian-born new media artist and director based in London whose research stands between spirituality, art and science to create work that explores themes of consciousness, the body as a perceptive interface, and the impact of humankind on the non-human world.