Gary, The purpose of this monumental installation (it enlarges) is to allow or enable the "viewer" to participate in the work and step, or be drawn beyond point of view, or "perspective" altogether.

1. http://www.adidabiennale.org

The work is titled Albertis Window which is a direct reference (and comprehensive critique), to/of the ground breaking work of Leon Battista Alberti who first wrote about, and formulated the "rules" for the new perspectival painting that began at the time. This perspectival revolution lead to a transformation in art and architecture and culture altogether. It also gave birth to Cartesian science, Enlightenment reason, and provided the paradigm for the modern culture of secular humanism.

The President of the Inverno in Firenze (Winter in Florence) visited the Venice exhibitiion and thereby insisted on having this work as a key feature at this years Florence exhibition. She also had the full backing of the Florence art world movers and shakers. They even went out of their way to allow/facilitate the installation of this work.

Paradoxically (maybe)It is going to be exhibited in a building in which Alberti once worked.

It is also going to be in the same room as the classic work of perspectival painting The Last Supper by Ghirlandaio.

What is also unique about this exhibit is that it is the first time that the usual Classical, Inverno In Firenze, is prominently featuring a decidely "modernist" work of art (actually four pieces). And an extraordinary one at that.

John,
that work is interesting. My understanding is that the traditional form of pictorial representation using perspective methods developed by Renaissance artists is sometimes referred to as Alberti's Window.

This is because, in his treatise Della Pittura, [trans: On Painting], 1435-6, the Classical theorist and painter Leon Battista Alberti noted that, when he set out to paint a scene on a panel, he assumed the picture would represent the visible world as if he were looking through a window.

Many have held that this form of western perspective is a natural form of representation.

Pam,
The fractured modernism exemplified by cubist painting remained largely confined to experimental, avant-garde work. It is the pop artists who picked this fracturing up and played around with it.

Even in film the dominant form of the moving image was a single image in a single frame.

It may well be with the computer screen, where multiple "windows" coexist and overlap, that Albertis's window perspective may have met its end.