“The End of Landscape”: Depicting nature in an age ruled by the fake and misinformation

Zoumboulakis Gallery presents the group exhibition “The End of the Landscape”, curated by Christoforos Marinos from 12 December 2024 to 4 January 2025

As the curator writes on the exhibition text: The sixteen artists taking part in the group exhibition “The End of Landscape” investigates the possibilities of depicting nature in an age ruled by the fake and misinformation. As demonstrated by their works, the contemporary landscape is experienced primarily through memories, with the help of mnemonic techniques and tools. Landscape painting here is not a “symptom of quietism”, nor does it declare “the desire to escape the turmoil of cities into the peace of the countryside”. The reality of the landscape is relegated to second place. The relationship of the contemporary artist with nature is a conceptual game of recalling images from real or virtual itineraries. In the works of the fifteen visual artists, Athens – the city, in general – is absent. The landscape is presented as an endangered place, under the constant threat of climate change, natural disasters, overtourism and armed combat; ultimately, a menacing place.

Contemporary artists seem to have discharged of the weight of the past, engaging with the landscape that surrounds them without guilt or collective purpose. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, the landscape transforms into a malleable material for private use, which you can shape on the screen of your computer by instructing a machine. The twenty-first century is full of landscape painters, who, paradoxically, often create in the absence of the real landscape. Looking at the works in this exhibition, you understand the polysemy of the concept of landscape: internal landscapes, landscapes of the mind, landscapes to escape to, landscapes as refuge, landscapes that penetrate one another, landscapes that come together and reproduce to make new landscapes, landscapes independent but also dependent on memory and recollection. Let’s not forget, finally, that an exhibition, too, is a landscape ripe for exploration. This particular exhibition (a meta-landscape in itself) aspires to generate a dialogue on the role of the landscape and our relationship with it today.