Humans’ relationship with nature has turned more complicated and ambivalent throughout history. Art, seen as a way to relate to a landscape, is a practice that has accompanied us from the beginning of our civilization to question this relationship. Increasingly, artists have attempted to capture nature in images to bring pieces of the green wilderness into the domestic domain. The exhibition “Solastalgia” presented by the Museum Giersch at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, exposes the artificial nature of such a practice by showcasing paintings that represent natural landscapes of the Rhein Main area.

After passing through a wooden door, a red carpet leads the way to a different dimension. Purple lights create an atmosphere that welcomes visitors to a dreamlike world. Live specimens of young trees occupy the space like a surrealistic path through a forest. Behind the trees canvases can be seen through the leaves, canvases that were empty at the point of their creation when the artist’s eye looked directly at a natural landscape. Moving on the red surface, visitors stand among natural actors to discover images of landscapes and experience an inversion of the point of view of the artist and the spectator.

Leaves and branches force the eye to look through instead of simply looking at them. The act of discovering each painting is done by wandering around the trees and looking through “nature” for the image of a landscape that once was. However, is any of it actually natural? We look at nature under chandeliers and lanterns, purple lights bouncing off walls and trees alike, making everything part of this human attempt to bring nature closer to us. The artificial experience becomes evidence of a human longing for what is not there, for what, perhaps, has been lost, for a disappearing landscape of the Main.

ca.