Museumnacht010: Chasing the Dot by Philip Vermeulen

Museumnacht 010

Museum Night 010 is an initiative by Rotterdam-based art institutions, museums, and galleries to provide both novice art enthusiasts and seasoned museum-goers with a stimulating, alternative museum experience.

Chasing the Dot

Philip Vermeulen’s immersive installation Chasing the Dot (2021–ongoing) is an intense multisensory experience exploring the depth and physicality of color in a large Ganzfeld space. The audience sits on a custom-shaped couch, enveloped in a diffuse field of light and color that eliminates horizon and boundaries.

Visitors are confronted with watching with their ears and listening with their eyes. Synesthesia, where stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to unexpected experiences in another, is a strong theme in Vermeulen’s work.

Each exhibition features bespoke compositions as part of an experimental process, resulting in an evolving choreography. As color manifests, light becomes material and a fluctuating dot appears at the center of your vision.

Philip Vermeulen

Philip Vermeulen is a Dutch artist exploring the fundamentals of human perception. His monumental installations operate between kinetic art, sound art, light art and audiovisual experimentation.

These sensory works engage the entire body through movement, light, sound and vibration. In his hypersculptures, Vermeulen works with speed, rhythm and physical force, balancing seduction and sensory overload while questioning the relationship between mind and matter.

Since graduating with highest honours from the ArtScience Interfaculty at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, his work has been shown at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Voorlinden and Zentrum für Internationale Lichtkunst in Unna. In 2020, he was nominated for the Volkskrant Visual Art Prize and the Golden Calf Award for Best Interactive Production.