Fifteen years since Iceland’s banking crisis, funding cuts have left the nation’s art in a state of potential peril

Paolo Pellegrin at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg: the real and the sublime

From November 25, 2023, to March 17, 2024, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presents the exhibition “Paolo Pellegrin: Fragile Wonders”

Source: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg · Image: Paolo Pellegrin · ©Paolo Pellegrin, license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paolo-Pellegrin-ritratto_BASSA.jpg

A gigantic iceberg, glowing lava, barren landscapes, mighty vegetation, boundless flocks of birds, and enraptured animal worlds—Paolo Pellegrin’s (b. 1964) photographic exploration of the Anthropocene is a visually powerful journey into the unknown. For one year, he traced the state of nature from Iceland to Greenland, from Sicily to South Tyrol, and from Namibia to Costa Rica. The roots of this project lie in an expedition to Antarctica that Pellegrin undertook in 2017 together with a group from NASA. In a comprehensive exhibition, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presents for the first time in Germany the impressively direct, but also poetic and at times surreal photographs and projections of the Italian photographer’s global analysis of nature.

The winner of ten World Press Photo Awards, various Photographer of the Year Awards, the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award, and many other honors, Paolo Pellegrin is one of the most famous documentary and war photographers of our time. His photographs are captivating not only for their documentary value, but also for their aesthetic power. They are more than pure reportage photography, for he has long since abandoned image sharpness in favor of a broad spectrum of light and shadow. Thus, his most recent nature photographs, which are based on the four elements, are also motivated by a personal quest: “Yes, of course it’s about landscapes and nature, but I have to transform them. […] I’m looking for the sublime.” Whether in color or in black and white, Paolo Pellegrin exposes the textures and patterns, the surfaces, the enormous power, as well as the vulnerability of our planet. His “Fragile Wonders” not only tell the story of climate change, but open space for new viewing experiences of nature beyond catastrophes.

The exhibition was developed for the Museum Intesa Sanpaolo in Turin and adapted and expanded for the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in collaboration with Magnum Photos. Nominated as early as 2001, Paolo Pellegrin has been a member of the renowned Magnum photo agency since 2005.

Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth at the Museum Barberini, Potsdam

From November 18, 2023 to April 1, 2024, the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, hosts “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth”, the first exhibition on landscapes by Edvard Munch, focusing on his approach to nature.

Source: Museum Barberini, Potsdam · Image: Edvard Munch, “The Yellow Log”, 1912 Munchmuseet, Oslo.

On the one hand, Edvard Munch viewed nature as a cyclically self-renewing power; on the other, he saw it as a reflection of his own inner turmoil. Munch developed a pantheistic understanding of nature, which he projected onto the forests and coasts of Norway. The dramatic weather depicted in his paintings is especially striking in light of the current climate crisis.

Edvard Munch’s art is first and foremost known for its striking explorations of deep human emotions. Throughout his career, however, his strong fascination with the natural world played perhaps an equally important role as his interest in the psychic dimensions of existence. Reflective of his wide-ranging imagination and sensibility, Munch explored nature motifs and the landscape genre in order to question humankind’s place in a cosmic cycle of life, and to celebrate the beauty of the elements as well as nature’s transformative powers.

Despite the leading role that the natural world plays in Munch’s production, there has been little sustained research into the subject. The exhibition “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth” is the first major attempt to explore the importance of Munch’s depictions of nature in depth and to challenge common conceptions. By presenting lesser-known works alongside some of his most famous paintings, Trembling Earth sheds light on the artistic, scientific, and philosophical ideas that influenced Munch’s work, and shows how his art resonates with the current climate crisis. Munch’s time saw an awareness of the dangers of climate change related to expanding industrialization and urbanization throughout Europe. At the same time, scientific breakthroughs helped promote a new understanding of the complexities of the natural world. The multilayered, open-ended character of Munch’s visions makes his works highly pertinent at a time haunted by the instability of natural systems and deeply troubling scenarios of future climate change.

“Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth” was on view at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, from June 10, 2023–October 15, 2023. After its venue in Postdam, it will be on view in Oslo from April 27 to August 24, 2024.

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