Sun Rise | Sun Set describes a fundamental loop: day and night, the turning of world. Our little patch of the universe has been spinning away on its lopsided axis long before our species drew its first breath, and it’ll probably keep spinning long after our last. At this threshold, biological time and planetary time overlap. Even though on the planetary scale, an individual life seems unfathomably smol. What impact could just one person possibly have on the future of earth? How much does just one more barrel of oil, just another transatlantic flight really matter? Statistically speaking, not much, but when you scale them up to the needs of 7.6 billion little lives, at some point the ice caps start melting and the ocean is suddenly on fire. For the first time in human history, the current trajectory of global warming has forced us to confront the consequences of our choices, not just as individuals, communities, races, or states, but as a species on the whole.
Carefully curated by Nina Pohl, Agnes Gryczkowska, and Kerstin Renerig, the most recent exhibition at the Schinkel Pavillion doesn’t propose any answers to our current quagmire or even try to agitate us into action. Rather it subtly attunes visitors to processes and timescales that normally go beyond the scope of individual human perception. Precious Okoyomon’s installation Ditto Ditto (2020) is full of worms invisible to the eye, though not necessarily to the touch. Nearby, Rachel Rose’s Borns (2019) series juxtaposes mineral rocks with organic glass forms, which, unlike the rocks, will flow, sink, and spread over the years. But by far the most concise example of this approach is Pierre Huyghe’s Circadian Dilemma (El Día del Ojo) (2017), whose title refers to the 24-hour circadian cycles that structure life on our planet, even in the absence of light. Almost permanently under maintenance, Huyghe’s aquarium is populated by the species Astyanax mexicanus, otherwise known as blind cave fish, some of whom have evolved to lose their eyesight. The artificial lighting in the aquarium is adjusted according to atmospheric factors on site—wind, air pressure, temperature, etc.—while the transparency of the glass panes is determined by some kind of geolocation program. Having lost their eyes, we can assume that the aquarium’s inhabitants are largely indifferent to the complex lighting conditions unfolding around them. Here, it isn’t hard to see an analogy between the cave fish’s limited sense of the world and humanity’s wilful obliviousness, as our species hurtles towards a self-made catastrophe and the precarious future that lies beyond it.
Most visitors are likely to have their own ideas about the environment by the time they get there, and the exhibition doesn’t really set out to inform or change minds. Instead, what sets Sun Rise I Sun Set apart is the amount of care the curators have invested in the presentation, or in other words, how well the exhibition has actually been put together. Walking through the building, you get the feeling that every visual detail, every juxtaposition of works has been carefully considered. The lighting on the ground floor recalls the atmosphere of ethnographic museums, while the piercing green of Pamela Rosenkranz’ installation upstairs, Infection (Calvin Klein Obsession for Men) (2021), bathes everything in an otherworldly glow. Meanwhile the works themselves unfold as a series of repetitions with minor differences, or feedback loops if you will. Near Huyghe’s Circadian Dilemma, for example, we find Max Ernst’s Swampangel (1940), whose decalcomaniacal landscape textures not only echo the rock formations in Huyghe’s aquarium, but also resurface in Richard Oelze’s Baumlandschaft (1935) and Anj Smith’s Nachträglichkeit (2010) later on. Elsewhere in the exhibition, Jean Painlevé’s mini-documentary The Lovelife of the Octopus (1967) offers a lush scientific view of octopus reproduction. In the same room, Monira Al Quadiri’s Divine Memory (2019) combines hallucinogenically color-graded footage of octopi with islamic poetry and video-game music to give the impression of a mythical if not otherworldly life form, re-enchanting Painlevé’s scientific image so to speak. By and large, the works in the show aren’t presented as closed aesthetic units. Rather, the curators bring them together in such a way that the aesthetic effects emerging between them are just as memorable as the works themselves.
One moment is especially emblematic of this approach. In a narrow corridor between two darkened rooms, we find a series of crisp greyscale photographs depicting the details of various plant parts. Most of the images were taken by Karl Blossfeldt. Originally trained as a decorative sculptor, Blossfeldt rose to fame among the artists associated with Neue Sachlichkeit for his straight and sober plant studies, which were actually developed as practical teaching aides for his students in drawing and sculpture. But among them lies an impostor. Superficially indistinguishable from Blossfeldt’s photogravures, Joan Fontcuberta’s Braohypoda frustrata (1984 / 2015) reveals fundamental differences upon closer inspection—namely the flowers’ stems seem to be partly made of teeth, revealing the entire image as a collage. This brief alienation effect automatically casts a shadow of doubt over the rest of Blossfeldt’s ostensibly objective images. Despite their seemingly scientific style, Blossfeldt’s photographs were in fact often retouched just as extensively as Fontcuberta’s, if not more. Simple enough as this curatorial gesture is, it invites us to doubt the adequacy of our own percepts when it comes to nature. With images like these, it seems impossible to make any clear distinction between nature and artifice. Indeed, the categories collapse entirely.