The Quantum Effect, curated by Daniel Birnbaum and Jacqui Davies, opens to the public on 5 September 2025. SMAC’s exhibition programme is realised in collaboration with world-class institutions and curators, and this exhibition is produced by SMAC and OGR Torino, a culture and innovation hub in a vast former railway repair building. The Quantum Effectexplores spatial and temporal paradoxes introduced by quantum theory: parallel universes, time travel, teleportation, supersymmetry and dark matter. The exhibition will include works by some of today’s most prominent artists woven into a cinematic narrative using imagery from contemporary science and from the worlds of science fiction and pop culture.
Birnbaum and Davies combine artworks, scientific experiments, quantum mechanical equations, and science fiction to create a total quantum effect across 1,000 sq m of exhibition space. The curation draws conceptually on Raymond Roussel’s seminal 1914 novel Locus Solus with its account of eight miraculous tableaux vivants taking place in a glass architecture. Taking a cue from quantum realities, the exhibition signals new creative possibilities where objects and roles can be both one thing and seemingly incompatible others. Besides works by artists such as Dara Birnbaum, Isa Genzken, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Jacqui Davies, Jeff Koons, Mark Leckey, and Marcel Duchamp/Man Ray, The Quantum Effect displays curator-made elements - “entangled” cinematic collages of puzzling glimpses from the world of quantum theory and computing, as well as “Science Fiction”, an alternative quantum timeline that, true to the show’s theme, questions the notion of linear time and the nature of reality.
SMAC’s exhibition space is comprised of 16 galleries, arranged along a continuous corridor that stretches over 80m. The Quantum Effect will centre around Isa Genzken’s mirror room Oil VII (2007). From this central point, the exhibition unfolds symmetrically, with galleries to the left and right experienced as parallel states, as if the show is happening simultaneously in multiple realities. It will in effect become possible for viewers to live in one of many possible worlds as they progress through the exhibition’s “supersymmetrical” layout.
