LAND_SCOPE : Fotoarbeiten von Roni Horn bis Thomas Ruff aus der DZ BANK Kunstsammlung

There are several good reasons to organize, at this time, an exhibition of contemporary art photography focused on landscapes. One is the ubiquity of the theme in contemporary art; another, the broad spectrum of photographic works on the theme, ranging from compositions of supposedly idyllic nature to conceptual image constructions and works preoccupied with agricultural or cultural landscapes. Over the last few years in particular, since the advent of digitalization, virtual image creations have joined landscapes observed and recorded in real time that reflect equally the current state of the planet and the image genre of landscapes. The title of the exhibition was coined to signify the programmatic orientation of the project: LAND_SCOPE was derived from the English "landscape," replacing "scape"with "scope," which derives from the Ancient Greek "skopein" (to look at) and can be translated, among other options, as outlook, horizon and purview. The underscore between the two words serves as a symbolic reference to the digital world and to the horizon line that has shaped human perception of nature and landscape for thousands of years. This publication aims to highlight and explore above-mentioned scope of landscape in contemporary art as well as in ecological and social discourse. The DZ BANK Art Collection is well positioned for such a project. More than one tenth of approximately 8,000 works collected by the bank over the past 25 years deal in various ways with the phenomenon of landscape. We were able to choose 120 photographic works by 59 artists and organize the exhibition into seven sections. In all seven - Ideal Landscapes, Wastelands, Political Territories, Landscape as a Concept, Formative Powers of Nature, (Agri)Cultural Landscapes and Digital Landscapes - there is a palpable field of tension between the longing for unspoiled nature and its imminent edangerment.