X-RAY

X-RAY
The Power of Roentgen Vision

Blower hall and Compression hall, World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte
9 November 2025–16 August 2026

X-RAY is the first ever exhibition dedicated to the phenomenon of X-rays and the wide-ranging cultural and artistic influence of X-ray vision. Following Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays in November 1895, news of this novel type of radiation and its ability to penetrate the invisible realm spread like wildfire, unleashing a storm of enthusiasm among physicists, doctors and the general public. Röntgen’s first act was to circulate a paper in five languages detailing his experimental apparatus, thereby enabling countless laboratories around the world – from Vienna and St Petersburg to Buenos Aires, Kolkata and Melbourne – to generate X-rays and X-ray images of objects. Röntgen’s discovery brought him fame overnight. Yet he relinquished any claim to patent rights, a decision that fuelled the spread of this seemingly magical form of radiation – and surely played a role in him being awarded in 1901 the first ever Nobel Prize in Physics.

Decades would pass before it was properly understood. Röntgen and some other scientists proposed that X-rays were longitudinal waves in luminiferous aether. In 1948, it was discovered that the sun emits X-radiation; and, in 2003, X-rays were observed in bolts of lightning.

The discovery of X-rays was the spectacular culmination of a quest to discover the realm of the invisible in the late 19th century. Speculative forays over preceding decades indicate a widespread fascination with this topic. A story by Kurd Laßwitz, for example, the father of German science fiction, tells of a private researcher who develops a substance called “Diaphot” that renders the body transparent. Similarly, the novel Elektra, published by Ludwig Hopf in 1892 under the pseudonym of Philander, features a country doctor and his celebrated wish: “If only there were a way to make people as transparent as jellyfish!”

It was in 1895, the year of Röntgen’s discovery, that Sigmund Freud coined the word “psychoanalysis” to describe the method by which he would plumb the realm of dreams and the unconscious. The same year saw the screening in Berlin of the first ever commercial film in the Bioscope format. Soon after, G. A. Smith’s short film The X-Rays (1897) made playful use of this magical form of radiation in a story of two lovers. Around the same time, microbiology discovered a hitherto unknown “life form”: the virus. From the very beginning, Eros, Thanatos, and techne (Ancient Greek for art, skill, craft) were all inextricably linked with X-ray vision.

X-RAY showcases a broad spectrum of X-ray technology and its many applications, including early laboratory apparatus and X-ray images, the Pedoscope shoe-fitting machine (introduced around 1920), and X-ray satellites such as eROSITA, which are used to explore galaxies and investigate dark matter in space. The central theme of the exhibition is the transillumination – whether close-up or from afar – of animate and inanimate matter. Exhibits include the “Transparent Human”, which was created at the end of the 1920s by the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden. This iconic representation of X-ray vision provides a view of the complex structures within the human body.

Meanwhile, imaging techniques based on X-rays have steadily progressed, leading to the development of, for example, computer tomography (CT). In parallel, the ability to limit exposure to radiation during examination has improved immeasurably. And yet, whereas radiology is now routine in the medical sphere, artists around the world have retained their fascination with this phenomenon and have produced a host of works that use X-rays, incorporate X-ray images or harness the idea of X-ray vision.

The creative means employed in such works include original X-ray images, which are cropped, painted over, or modified, augmented and collaged with different materials and colours; digitally enlarged images that serve as templates for glass windows; and graphic simulations of the X-ray process. Similarly, radiological motifs are incorporated in paintings, sculptures and graphics. And skull X-rays feature as a motif in the vanitas genre along with skeletons and individual bones, both continuing in idiosyncratic fashion a long tradition of memento mori and danse macabre.

Used as a medium in the visual arts, X-ray images depart from a traditional, mimetic, realistic reproduction of reality. Instead, they deal in alienation, depriving their object of its three-dimensional spatiality, replacing it with a shadowy silhouette, and adding metaphorical depth by revealing hidden structures and the invisible. Emerging on the threshold to the 20th century, this medium will become a key feature of modern art.
When artists begin, with Meret Oppenheim, to present skull X-rays as self-portrait, the renunciation of the familiar human image is complete. This rejection is in keeping with the idea that individual – or, indeed, supra-individual – identity is only disclosed beneath the surface.

Beyond the visual arts, a radiological aesthetic has left its impact on architecture, fashion, advertising, caricature and comics. X-ray images appear in literature as quotations that penetrate life and everyday culture and have become formative motifs in film and television.

THE EXHIBITION ROUTE

The exhibition route is staged as an experiential landscape and gathers, amidst the historic blower machines, among other things, an early X-ray laboratory, a walk-in X-ray chapel by Wim Delvoye, a rounded arch stained-glass window made from lung X-ray images by Christoph Brech, a dinosaur-sized broiler chicken by Andreas Greiner, a transparent brick labyrinth by Cris Bierrenbach, a catwalk featuring X-ray fashion by Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Iris van Herpen, a 1:1.15 scale satellite model suspended in the airspace of the blower hall, as well as an X-ray cinema in the compression hall. The exhibition aims at the broadest possible audience by connecting the wide spectrum from science to art with insights that are both captivating and knowledgeable.

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE EXHIBITION CHAPTERS

The exhibition begins with an introduction to the topic from a historical and physical viewpoint. The quest to reveal the invisible realm is illustrated by works from Leonardo da Vinci and a sequence of images especially created for the show by graphic novel author Jens Harder. This is followed by a presentation of the early days of X-ray research, around the year 1900, with a recreation of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s laboratory. Whether in early film or recorded music, Röntgen’s decision to afford open access to his discovery triggered a worldwide wave of enthusiasm for X-rays that would culminate in him being awarded the first ever Nobel Prize in Physics.

A section on radiology during the First World War highlights the significant role played by two-time Nobel Prize-winner Marie Curie in advancing the use of X-ray technology. In the 1920s, the “Transparent Human” in Dresden showcased this hitherto unknown transparency of the human body. Such transillumination of the body was mirrored by the transillumination of the soul in art and literature – not least in the works of Thomas Mann, Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.

After this chronological introduction, the subsequent themes are addressed diachronically across the century. Transcendence, religion, and breaking taboos meet gender issues. The focal point here is the 10 x 5 meter visitor-accessible chapel by Wim Delvoye, on loan from Mudam Luxembourg.

A large section is devoted to politics. This brings together political caricatures incorporating X-ray vision, documents of civil courage, and testimonies of subjection and resistance. The Third Reich and the GDR are featured, as is colonial and postcolonial South Africa. From the sphere of music, there is a story of political subversion from the former Soviet Union, where pirated recordings were pressed on old medical X-ray images – plus a record shop brimming with radiological inventiveness. Expeditions into the deeper layers of art follow this. On five large projection screens, visitors can literally delve into paintings using digital glasses and sliders to see below surface. This is followed by explorations of the animal kingdom, medicine, and molecular biology. Particularly through a film and photo documentation from Ukraine, the ongoing danger of tuberculosis is made evident.

Up to 10-meter-long panoramas of nature and technology frame the large stage area, which features the chapter on architecture and a walkable labyrinth made of transparent brick walls, as well as a catwalk showcasing X-ray fashion. Both the microscopic and macroscopic sciences are on show at the head of the large stage area. These range from materials research to space telescopes and the X-ray exploration of black holes and galaxies. The compression hall presents selected works of modern and contemporary art dealing with the key themes of existence, identity, death and eternity. Meanwhile, the cinema in the compression hall is showing powerful films that incorporate exemplarily the topic of X-rays and the society of transparency.

THE 18 CHAPTERS OF THE EXHIBITION

Making visible the Invisible – The Triumph of X-Ray Technology – Radiology in Wartime – Screening the Body, Screenig the Soul – Religion, Transcendence, and breaking Taboos – Gender roles, Body images – X-ray in Politics and History – Bone Music – In the Depths of Art – Understanding the Animal World – Medicine and Molecular Biology – Material Research, Visual Technology – X-Ray Architecture – Fashion Revelations – Re-mapping Outer Space – Identity, Death, and Eternity – X-ray Comics and Films – The Structure of Nature

 
A-Z OF THE PARTICIPANTS

X-RAY brings together artists from 25 countries worldwide: from Armenia to Brazil, China, Iran, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mexico, South Africa, Ukraine, and the USA.

Jarbas Agnelli (1963, BR) Renate Bertlmann (1943, AT) Cris Bierrenbach (1964, BR) Christoph Brech (1964, DE) Arnaud Bresson (1992, FR) Reynold Brown (1917-1991, US) Claude Cahun (1894-1954, FR) John Carpenter (1948, US) Jaume Collet-Serra (1974, ESP) Roger Corman (1926-2024, US) Marie Curie (1867-1934, PL) Wim Delvoye (1965, BE) Thomas Demand (1964, DE) Maxim Dondyuk (1983, UKR) Matt Dupuis (1980, CA) Josef Maria Eder & Eduard Valenta (1855-1944/1857-1937, AT) Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958, UK) Jean Paul Gaultier (1952, FR) Isa Genzken (1948, DE) Hans W. Geißendörfer (1941, DE) Andreas Greiner (1979, DE) Barbara Hammer (1948-2019, US) Jens Harder (1970, DE) Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971, AT) John Heartfield (1891-1968, DE) Iris van Herpen (1984, NL) Voluspa Jarpa (1971, CL) Fritz Kahn (1888-1968, DE) Frida Kahlo (1907-1954, MEX) William Kentridge (1955, ZA) Jürgen Klauke (1943, DE) Shahram Khosravi (1966, IRN) Hans Kupelwieser (1948, AT) Max von Laue (1879-1960, DE) Lynn Hershman Leeson (1941, US) Rosie Leventon (1946, UK) Danica Lundy (1991, CA) Thomas Mann (1875-1955, DE) Rémy Markowitsch (1957, CH) Alix Marie (1989, FR) Noelle Mason (1977, US) Ana Mendieta (1948-1985, CU) John Macintyre (1857-1928, UK) Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969, DE) Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962, US) Edvard Munch (1863-1944, NO) Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985, CH) Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005, SCO/UK) Walid Raad (1967, LBN) Christa Reinig (1926-2008, DE) Arie van’t Riet (1947, NL) Martin Rikli (1898-1969, CH) Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė (1933-2007, LT) Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923, DE) Arabo Sargsyan (1990, ARM) Katharina Sieverding (1941, DE) George Albert Smith (1864-1959, UK) Sumayya Vally (1990, ZA) Nick Veasey (1962, UK) Paul Verhoeven (1938, NL) Michael Venus (1971, DE) Ziquan Wang (1993, CN) William Wegman (1943, US) Horst Widmann (1938, AT) Lu Yang (1984, CN) Adam Zyglis (1982, US)

CATALOGUE

The catalogue book X-RAY, edited by Ralf Beil and Thomas Zaunschirm, will be published in both German and English by Sandstein Kultur, Dresden. In addition to essays by Daniel Bauer, Ralf Beil, Beatriz Colomina, Ernst-Peter Fischer, Stefan Gronert, Shahram Khosravi, Matthis Krischel, Peter Predehl, Thomas Zaunschirm, and other authors, this richly illustrated publication contains introductory texts and commentaries on works from all chapters of the exhibition, as well as literary, scientific, and political source texts from 1895 to the present, including texts by Amy Bartlett, C.H.T. Crosthwaite, Marie Curie, Maxim Dondyuk, Thomas Mann, Christa Reinig, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Sumayya Vally, Jiri Wolker, and Virginia Woolf.

The publication will be released on March 18, 2026. Until this date, a subscription price of 40 EUR applies for pre-orders. Afterwards, the catalogue will cost 48 EUR in the museum shop and 58 EUR in bookstores.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION TO THE EXHIBITION

X-RAY was realized based on an idea by Thomas Zaunschirm and a Curatorial Studies seminar led by the general director and curator Dr. Ralf Beil during the winter semester of 2020 at the University of Bern, as well as on-site research at the Völklinger Hütte and several research volumes by Prof. Dr. Thomas Zaunschirm from Vienna with comprehensive material overviews.

The Völklinger Hütte, whose main complex was largely constructed around the time of and since the discovery of X-rays, had dedicated X-ray devices and rooms specifically for material testing purposes and, from the 1950s onward, also conducted tuberculosis mass screenings on the factory site. With its auratic blower hall as the machine room of modernity and the adjoining compression hall, it offers exceptional conditions and ideal presentation possibilities for a comprehensive parcours on the artistically, culturally, medically, and intellectually significant theme of X-RAY.

The opening of X-RAY is on 8 November 2025, exactly 130 years after the first generation of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.

X-RAY continues in original manner a series of bold thematic exhibitions that have helped forge the reputation of the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklingen Ironworks – with its five programmatic pillars of INDUSTRY, CULTURE, HISTORY, ART and NATURE – as an exceptional showcase for contemporary culture. This includes, in particular, the triad of major exhibitions: THE WORLD OF MUSIC VIDEO (2022), THE GERMAN CINEMA (2023/2024) and THE TRUE SIZE OF AFRICA (2024/2025).

This highly elaborate overview exhibition is made possible not only by Saartoto funds, but also in particular by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digital and Energy and its substantial flagship funding for Saarland 2025.
A special sponsor of the exhibition is the company Xcare, which, together with radiologist Dr. med. Christoph Buntru, also fully supports the realization and permanent installation of Christoph Brech’s in situ work – the glass window ODEM, dedicated to the Völklinger ironworkers.