Andrés Ramírez Gaviria: INTERVAL
A collaboration with the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, Canada
Phileas, Opernring 17, Vienna
7 October 2026 – 16 January 2027
Opening: 6 October 2026, 6pm - 8pm
Andrés Ramírez Gaviria, Sources, installation view at Kunstraum Bernsteiner, 2012. Photo: Jürgen Kranzler
Our autumn exhibition presents Sources, a light installation by Andrés Ramírez Gaviria, realised with the support of Phileas for the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art in Canada. Curator Allison Glenn met Gaviria during a research trip to Vienna as part of our Visitor Programme and invited him to participate in the biennial, where Sources is presented at two key locations: the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and the CN Tower, one of the city’s most iconic landmarks.
In Sources, Gaviria translates radio waves emitted by distant celestial bodies into a sculptural light installation. Signals from various cosmic objects, which travelled many billions of light years before reaching Earth and being recorded by astronomers, appear here as modulating light signals with changing frequencies and intervals. For the exhibition in Vienna, Gaviria has adapted the installation specifically for Phileas’s space. The exhibition title, INTERVAL, draws on the word’s dual meaning, referring to both spatial measurement and the span of time between two segments.
Building on this notion of distance and duration, Gaviria also presents Mètre, a work that engages with the history of the metric system. Its point of departure is the mètre étalon (‘standard metre’), a series of sixteen marble bars installed in public spaces across Paris during the French Revolution to familiarise the population with the new unit of measurement. Today, only two of these étalons survive, serving as the basis for Gaviria’s marble replicas. The artwork asks whether any standard unit of measurement can ever be fully fixed in material form. The historical étalons were never completely identical and changed over time through natural material processes. Gaviria’s replicas also show small variations, revealing the instability of measurement, standardisation, and reproduction.
Together, Gaviria’s works create a space where scientific precision and subtle shifts intersect, suggesting that every system of order is also a system of interpretation.
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Andrés Ramírez Gaviria is an artist born in Bogotá, Colombia, who has been based in Vienna for over two decades. His work explores the intersections of science, technology, language, and history. Grounded in long-term research, his conceptual practice examines how systems of knowledge are constructed, transmitted, and interpreted. Drawing on diverse methodologies and historical references, he creates work that invites alternative modes of perception and thought.
Gaviria’s work has been exhibited at Kunsthaus Graz; BA CA Kunstforum Vienna; Lentos Museum Linz; Kunsthaus Dresden; GAMeC in Bergamo; La Casa Encendida in Madrid; and the Museum of Modern Art and the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República in Bogotá, as well as at the Sonambiente and Transmediale festivals in Berlin and the Caribbean Biennial in Santo Domingo, among others.
He is the recipient of the transmediale.06 Award and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Emerging Artist Award. In 2014, Gaviria co-founded Sigmund, and in 2017 Anna, two non-profit exhibition spaces in Vienna, together with Norbert Pfaffenbichler. He is also co-editor with Yuki Higashino of the annual publication Agency. -
