The wilder­ness returns to art! And it does so at a time when the blank spaces on the world map have largely disap­peared and an “untouched natural state” virtu­ally only exists in the form of areas desig­nated as nature reserves. The search for the last open spaces, the expe­di­tion as an artistic medium, and post-human visions of a world devoid of people char­ac­terize the works of many contem­po­rary artists along­side the rene­go­ti­a­tion of the rela­tion­ship between indi­vidual and beast.

The SCHIRN is dedi­cating an exten­sive thematic exhi­bi­tion to this recur­ring fasci­na­tion and presents works of art from 1900 to the present. With impor­tant pieces by some 30 artists – inlcuding Tacita Dean, Mark Dion, Jean Dubuf­fet, Max Ernst, Asger Jorn, Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Gerhard Richter, Frank Stella, Thomas Struth, Henri Rous­seau und Carle­ton E. Watkins – it not only sheds light on the phenom­enon of the wilder­ness in terms of iconog­raphy, but also shows it as a prin­ciple and motor of artistic creative work.

Artists have repeat­edly been drawn to that which is wild, untamed, uncul­ti­vated since the begin­ning of the aesthetic modern age. The “wilder­ness” has always also served as a projec­tion surface for anything that was different and foreign, for the longing for a primor­dial life beyond the bound­aries of civi­liza­tion. In today’s “Anthro­pocene,” the utopia of a natural state remote from culture and human influ­ence seems anachro­nistic. And yet the exam­i­na­tion of tradi­tional images and fictions of wilder­ness seems more alive than ever before.