STRATA STROLLING

The group exhibition Strata Strolling brings together the works of Adriana Bogdanova, Šimon Chovan, Irene de Boer, Adrian Kiss, Diana Scherer, and Aline Schwörer, each of whom envision the fossil remains of the future, yet to be unraveled. The exhibition engages with principles of speculative paleontology and archaeology: like amber preserving the remnants of ancient life, exhibited works absorb microparticles of the present. Conceived as a reinterpretation of the natural history museum within the framework of contemporary art, the exhibition reconsiders humanity’s desire to control and historicize nature and situate its elements into cultural contexts. Strata Strolling instead proposes a post-anthropocentric framework and a vision of entangled agencies that transcend the boundaries between the living and the inert, grounded in their inseparable condition.

Rather than presenting a purely dystopian vision of the future, the exhibition considers the imprint as a carrier of information, one that transforms alongside the tools with which we interpret the world. The artists’ approaches are rooted in reflections on the so-called second nature, a condition in which cultural practices not only shape perception to the point of appearing natural, but also rewrite the environment itself.

Each artist engages with distinct material and conceptual configurations; within the exhibition, they converge in a mutual unearthing of layered sedimentation of time, as well as diverse methods of storage and recording. Through organic, synthetic, and mimetic elements alike, the exhibited works suggest that traces of the present are already beginning to fossilize, gradually embedding our current state into the chasm of deep time—forward and beyond our existence simultaneously.

Karolína Voleská