Author Description

The exhibition shows how the shift in the relationship between man and the environment that took place at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century was reflected in art. The title's metaphor of the superorganism is an allusion to the expansiveness of mankind, which has brought about civilisational progress, but also degradation of the Earth. Modernity is a point in the history of Homo sapiens when the environment is intensively transformed by developing industry, ongoing urbanisation, and the colonisation of successive parts of the world. The attitudes that we encounter in avant-garde art comprise an intriguing mosaic of human fascinations, anxieties, reflections, and effects that we experience in relation to nature and which, due to their universality and the enduring character of the experience, remain invariably topical. The exhibition consists of the following parts: Postnatural Landscape, Biophilia, Embodied Vision, Fourth Dimension, Microcosm and macrocosm, and Evolution.