At first glance, it’s hard to believe that Hans-Christian Schink’s photos were taken just a stone’s throw from Berlin. The scenes the photographer captured for his new series seem too otherworldly to be from the lakes of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Schink spent a summer exploring supernatural landscapes just below the water’s surface. He left the shots to chance, clicking the shutter release without checking the viewfinder beforehand. In the resulting images, a secret world opens up behind dense swathes of swirling sediment and enchanted reed gardens. In some images, the sprawling thicket is clearly recognizable; in others, you see only abstract clouds of color. These mini Atlantises are on show at Kicken gallery in Charlottenburg. There, Schink’s color palette of poison green, cool turquoise and muted ochre matches the stately exhibition rooms perfectly, with the algae seeming to reach out into the wood-paneled walls and stuccoed ceilings. Schink explores the interaction between nature and civilization in his works, posing questions about the Anthropocene: in the photos you see sumps – remnants of the last Ice Age that mark the transition to modern life. Agriculture required the draining of many of these biotopes; how long the surviving habitats will be preserved is up to us.
Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Hans-Christian Schink, Kicken Berlin
Kicken, Kaiserdamm 118, 14057 Berlin–Charlottenburg; map
Tue–Fri 14–18h and by appointment
Hans-Christian Schink: Unter Wasser runs until 22.04.2022
@kickenberlin
