4 Big Years, an extraordinary exhibition of photographic, virtual reconstruction and animated art by design students from Wiesbaden in Germany, is being held at the University of Technology Sydney Gallery from 17 April to 18 May 2001.

Having toured Boston, New York, Stuttgart and Spain, the UTS Gallery showing is the first opportunity to see this work in Australia.

The exhibition has been made possible by a student exchange program UTS has maintained with the Fachhochschule Wiesbaden since 1986 and through the support of the Goethe Institut, Sydney and Lufthansa.

UTS visual communication design lecturer James Kesteven said the exhibition presented works in three high-standard and exciting visual communication design fields.

"Large Polaroid format calendars adopt a remarkable and inventive range of photographic processes to portray specific themes for each of the four years they were produced," Mr Kesteven said.

"The large-scale images provide unusual visual perceptions of our world, powerfully evoking mood and deserving of the international awards and acclaim they have attracted."

A highlight of the Wiesbaden exhibition is a 3D animation, a stunning virtual reconstruction of a Jewish synagogue in Wiesbaden that was totally destroyed by the Nazis in 1938.

"The reconstruction is a tribute to the talent of the group of interior design students and teachers called "Memo 38" and the versatility of this amazing design medium," Mr Kesteven said.

"This piece of lost cultural heritage has in a sense been coaxed back into existence through two years of painstaking graphical reconstruction, based only on a limited assortment of period photographs and information from the past.

"The work, which was presented as a video at the site of the synagogue 60 years after it was destroyed, is a bold stand against forgetting the past and the loss of history."

The third section of the exhibition, Virtual Worlds and Characters, offers a sample of animation films created to explore and challenge the vast potential of digital media to communicate to a broad audience.

"Complex and abstract concepts from underwater to outer space are realised, often with humour, using imagination and the very latest technologies," Mr Kesteven said.

"Digital animation will inevitably be relied on more and more to both entertain and inform us across many contexts in our daily lives and this is a very enjoyable way for viewers to share the progress being made in this field of design."

Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday 12-6pm and entry is free.