Jaguars and electric eels @ JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, Berlin

 STURTEVANT, Finite/Infinite (2010) Courtesy of the Estate of STURTEVANT and Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf

From my earliest days I felt the urge visited by Europeans. This urge characterizes a moment 

when our life seems to open before us like a limitless horizon. - in the introduction to the last 

part of his book Relation historique du voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent  

Alexander von Humboldt describes the reasons why he decided to travel for his research -  

whatever is far off and suggestive excites our imagination; such pleasures tempt us more than 

anything we may daily experience in the narrow circle of sedentary life.-

The pleasure and excitement of the journey seems to be the first reason for the expedition of 

Alexander von Humboldt, the German scientist and explorer, who lived between 700 and 800, 

more than the pale duty to study - that in a way, however, it also justifies this pleasure.

In fact his reason it is so interesting for us because it moves across a border, - literally in 

the torrid areas. It broke a code. This has something in common with art and with the wonder 

that art carries within itself.

The exhibition Jaguars and electric eels presents 39 works by 30 artists from the 

JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION collection in Berlin: Doug Aitken, Kader Attia, Heike 

Baranowsky, Trisha Donnelly, Juan Downey, Encyclopedia Pictura /Björk, Cyprien Gaillard, 

Ryan Gander, Manuel Graf, Cao Guimarães, Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson, Martin Honert, 

Donna Huanca, Isaac Julien, Simon Martin, Ana Mendieta, Nandipha Mntambo, Paul Pfeiffer, 

James Richards & Leslie Thornton, Ben Rivers, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Sturtevant, Bill 

Viola, Guan Xiao, Anicka Yi, Aaron Young.

The video that opens the exhibition is Finite / Infinite (2010) by Sturtevant where is projected 

on a long wall in which a film in loop: a black dog runs on a lawn. The dog comes out and 

comes back from the scene as if he were running in a circle.
The Flavor Genome (2016) by Anicka Yi is also one of the first artworks on display. The film, 

in 3 D and with a 5.1 surround sound system, challenges the human perceptive to its limits. 

A series of different images from natural scenarios are mixed with microscopic images. The 

voice of a scientist explains the history of evolution that has led to the possibility of 

manipulating the human genome so much that it is included within the plants.
The artificial, mimetic, being is an integral part of nature as in the video of Kader Attia 

 Mimesis as resistance (2013), where a particular bird specimen the Menella movellaehollandie,

 during the courtship, not only sings his repertoire, but also imitates all the other sounds and 

chants he has around.
In Untitled (2005) by Trisha Donnelly the alteration is created by the camera lens that 

repeatedly focuses and blurs the image that is reproducing: a stuffed jaguar. The dead animal so 

comes back to life through the movement of the machine. Life is definitely an artificial matter.

The exhibition insists that reality no longer distinguishes between what is natural and what is 

artificial but sees the two things as complementary elements and egalitarian, as written by 

Monika Kerkmann, in the Introduction,  to a small, well made, book given at the entrance.

This made me remember something, which Alexander von Humboldt probably knew. In the  

Critique of Judgment the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote:
In the face of a beautiful art product we must become aware that it is art and not nature, but 

the purpose of its form must nevertheless seem so free from any constraint of arbitrary rules as 

if it were a product of mere nature. [...] Therefore, the finality in the product of beautiful art, 

although it is intentional, must seem unintentional; that is to say, beautiful art must be able to 

be viewed as nature, although one is aware of the fact that it is art.
In the video The laughing alligator (1979) by a pioneer of video art Juan Downey, films a 

native population, the Yanomami of the Amazon rainforest, in the south of Venezuela. In the 

video the natives express the complex system of myths and beliefs that build their culture.
In this sense one wonders if man derives from nature, if he really can lives in continuity with it 

or this link has been interrupted forever.
It is possible that all this relation between human practice and natural life has been 

misunderstood?

 Cyprien Gaillard, Koe ( 2015), Courtesy of the artist and Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf

In Koe (2015) Cyprien Gaillard this relationship becomes a perturbing reterritorialization: a 

flock of exotic birds in the center of Düsseldorf where the species has unimaginably adapted.
The simulation of reality is instead what Natasha Sadr Haghighian insists on in Artificial life  

(1995). On the screen you see an image that seems magnified under the microscope but instead 

reproduces the dust in a corner of the room that is filmed by a camera.
But technological progress can also be an illusion like Isaac Julien's True North (2004), a 

three-channel video installation. The video shows the first expedition to the North Pole in 

1909 led by Robert Peary and Matthew Henson. At the beginning of the 20th century, the 

mission was seen as the triumph of progress. In truth, all the members of the expedition 

were excluded from the podium of the awards, in favor of Peary. The poetic account together 

with the music of Paul Schütze create an atmosphere that questions the sublime as an aesthetic 

category.
 

Isaac Julien, True North, (2004), Courtesy of the artist and St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland