A Contemporary Exploration of Landscape:
Review of the Exhibition “Horizonte y Límite: Visiones Del Paisaje” at Caixa Forum Barcelona 
Artpower 100

Mei Huang

“If I ask you what the world is, you might explain it to me within one or more reference frames. But if I ask you to tell me what the world is outside of these frames of reference, how would you answer?”

— Nelson Goodman, 1978:13

Human emotions towards nature and landscapes are inherently complex. When we live in villages surrounded and enveloped by nature, we aspire to build vast, technologically advanced cities made of concrete and steel. However, once confined within these self-constructed urban cages, we long to return to the embrace of natural fields and forests, as if the scenery of nature represents the most poetic destination for humanity.

In Alan Weisman’s acclaimed book, “The World Without Us,” he depicts a post-apocalyptic scenario where massive cities are devoid of human presence. What remains are abandoned buildings and the reclamation of these urban spaces by vegetation, forests, and wildlife. This imagery is not purely a figment of Weisman’s imagination; similar scenes can be observed in deserted suburban ghost towns where vegetation aggressively and invasively fills the voids in dilapidated concrete structures. These damp and wild environments are clearly no longer suitable for human habitation, yet the landscapes they create are profoundly moving and visually captivating. This aesthetic of decay has influenced numerous popular works, such as the critically acclaimed video game “The Last of Us” and its sequel, as well as the Netflix series adapted from the game.

What, then, is the significance of the landscape? How is it represented? In Denis Cosgrove’s “Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape”, he posits that landscapes do not merely exist in the external physical environment that people perceive, study, use, or enjoy. Perhaps when we think of the term “landscape,” we typically envision the earth, rivers, trees, sky, fields, and livestock before us. However, Cosgrove argues that landscape is a specific “way of seeing,” shaped by education, culture, and social background throughout history, guiding us to view the apparent objective realities in a particular manner. Edward Relph, in his “Place and Placelessness” (2016), also writes, “The real geographical environment is primarily composed of places, including those in people’s memories and landscapes, before the emergence of formal concepts such as location, region, and terrain.” This may be the charm of the landscape—it is a unique natural geography presented through each person’s distinct perspective, cognition, understanding, and memory. Thus, what do the landscapes around us look like? How are they presented through the artist’s eyes? Perhaps it is precisely because of the unique nature of landscapes that there is great anticipation for the visual feast created by the combination of contemporary art and landscape through the artist’s perspective.

In May 2024, CaixaForum Barcelona presented the exhibition “Horizonte y Límite: Visiones Del Paisaje (Horizon and Limit: Visions of the Landscape),” which explored how contemporary artists depict landscapes through various artistic mediums such as video, photography, painting, and installations. The exhibition was co-curated by Nimfa Bisbe, Director of the Contemporary Art Collection at the “La Caixa” Foundation, and independent curator Arola Valls. The exhibition featured 61 artworks by 39 artists from different countries, showcasing diverse attitudes towards nature. Notable artists included Anne Imhof, Tacita Dean, Patricia Dauder, Hamish Fulton, Ignasi Aballí, Joan Fontcuberta, Dionís Escorsa, Andreas Gursky, Bleda & Rosa, Andrea Galvani, Remy Zaugg, Luc Delahaye, Oriol Vilanova, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Perejaume, Danica Phelps, Victoria Civera, Karlos Gil, and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, among others.

The exhibition “Horizonte y Límite: Visiones Del Paisaje” is divided into four thematic sections, exploring the following questions: the fiction of the vision, the experience of the vision, the framing of nature, and the human impact on nature. The exhibition presents a complex and multifaceted perspective, blending critical thinking with a sense of responsibility. This exhibition is a continuation of the previous CaixaForum series “Horizonte y Límite.” It not only includes the contemporary collection of La Caixa Foundation but also incorporates and invites works from other contemporary artists, creating numerous interesting and dynamic dialogues between the foundation’s collection and other contemporary artworks.

In an interview with Artpower 100, Nimfa Bisbe discussed the inspiration for this exhibition: “The inspiration for this exhibition comes from the Contemporary Art Collection itself. Although it is not a line of work of “la Caixa” Collection, over the years we have gathered a significant group of works that incorporate the natural landscape. However, it was recently, with the addition of artworks created with digital technologies and pieces addressing environmental issues, that we saw great potential for a compelling exhibition. Landscape is a significant theme in our society and culture today, and considering the interest the exhibition is generating , I believe we made the right decision in organizing it.”

Highlight Artworks

“The Problem of Three Bodies” (2022) is a collaborative work by artists Dionís Escorsa (born 1970 in Tortosa) and Albert Merino (born 1979 in Barcelona). This piece falls under the exhibition’s theme of “The Fiction of the Vision.” Catalan artist José Nogué’s 1910 Romantic landscape painting “La esfinge de Roscoff” is projected onto three segmented video screens. The painting shimmers, and the animated video seems to imbue it with life: the sea sparkles, clouds shift across the sky, and everything radiates brilliance. The artists added three moving suns to this installation, corresponding to Johannes Kepler’s theory of three-body astronomy, which explores the movement of N bodies under mutual gravitational attraction in three-dimensional space. The simplest example is the motion of the Sun, Earth, and Moon in the solar system. In this installation, Escorsa and Merino simulate a three-body system, demonstrating the complexity of predicting the trajectories of three stars. As the positions of the three celestial bodies change, the light and darkness of the corresponding three videos also shift, making the scene alternately bright and dim. The originally serene landscape painting becomes unpredictable with the addition of technology and astronomical mechanics.

“Perimeter Pfynwald” (2018-2023) is another fascinating work, featured in the “Experience of the Vision” section. Swiss artist Marcus Maeder incorporates sound into this interactive installation. Viewers can stand in the center of the installation and use a touchpad to move a cursor and listen to the surrounding sounds on the screens. In this piece, the artist combines panoramic views of the Pfynwald Nature Reserve in Switzerland with a series of landscape sounds captured by an automated recording system distributed over several kilometers. These natural sounds include the rhythm of flowing rivers and the songs of birds. People standing amidst the encircling technological screens experience the audiovisual pleasure brought by the landscape and its sounds.The artist captures different environmental sounds at ten-minute intervals: the forest itself, major rivers, mountain streams, and a lake. Through these recordings, he compresses time and space to create a soundscape that reflects changes occurring under the impact of climate change. This immersive experience allows visitors to engage deeply with the natural environment and its acoustic properties, highlighting the dynamic relationship between nature and technology.

In the “Framing of Nature” section, one artwork particularly caught my attention. The video piece titled “Projection (matin/soir)” (1990/2019) by Swiss artist Rémy Zaugg depicts the artist painting in front of a large white canvas. This canvas is so enormous that it obscures the landscape he intends to depict. To overcome this, he uses a projector to cast the image of the landscape onto his canvas, employing traditional painting techniques. This method of projecting and ignoring the actual landscape while painting is inherently paradoxical and ironic. Notably, Zaugg uses white paint, and under the morning light in the video, the piece seems to open a window onto the landscape he is depicting. The contradictions and dissonance in this work compel viewers to reflect on the relationship between the artist—or humans in general—and the landscape, or about the construction of the imagined versus the actual one. This reflective approach challenges conventional perceptions and encourages a deeper contemplation of how we frame and interact with nature through art.

“Les Mées” (2006) and “Timefall [Anarres]” (2023) are prominent works in the “Human Impact on Nature” section. In the photograph “Les Mées” (2006), German artist Andreas Gursky captures an uncanny scene—a verdant lawn densely covered with solar panels. Although this scene represents an environmentally friendly effort, it evokes a sense of unease. The solar panels obstruct the vegetation from receiving sunlight, and the overwhelming presence of artificial technology prompts reflection on whether, despite the relative eco-friendliness of solar energy, such human interventions constitute an excessive exploitation of nature.

“Timefall [Anarres]” (2023) is another notable work. Spanish artist Karlos Gil presents an unsettling scene—an artificial pinkish-purple light fills a square glass container installation, which is suffused with white smoke. The title of this piece references the name of a fictional planet from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel “The Dispossessed” (1974). Inside the glass installation, the artist encloses metallic elements in organic hydro-cement and subjects them to an accelerated aging process. The inclusion of treated calcium and natural salts causes the seeds embedded in the cement to germinate, triggering the proliferation of lichen that covers the entire structure. As depicted in the apocalyptic scenario of “The World Without Us” mentioned at the beginning of the article, human ruins will be reclaimed by nature, and environments disrupted by human activity will revert to landscapes. Notably, this work is also part of La Caixa Foundation’s Apoyo a la Creación ’22 initiative, aimed at promoting contemporary artistic creation.

There are many thought-provoking works in the “Horizonte y Límite: Visiones Del Paisaje” exhibition, but due to space limitations, I can only highlight a few. The rest will have to be discovered by visitors themselves. As Arola Valls, the other co-curator of this exhibition, stated: “The main purpose of this exhibition is to draw viewers’ attention to environmental and landscape issues, especially in the context of global warming, to examine the impact of human factors on landscapes and the consequences we are about to face. This exhibition aims to present a rethinking of landscapes through visual art, based on the contemporary artworks in La Caixa Foundation’s collection and other related artists’ works.” Furthermore, Valls has prepared a series of colorful booklets at the entrance of the exhibition, guiding visitors to read and reflect on the relationship between themselves, art, society, culture, and the environment and landscape.

In the myriad discussions about today’s environment and landscapes, the concept of the “Anthropocene”—a geological epoch characterized by significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems—has become a trendy theoretical discourse. This human-centered geological timeframe allows us to examine the current ecological crisis within a historical depth. This exhibition offers us the chance to reflect on the footprint of human existence in nature and landscapes, giving an interactive and interpretative approach to landscapes through contemporary art, engaging viewers visually and auditory.

1. Noel Caster, Nature (2005), London: Routledge. p.1

2.  Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (2007), London: Penguin Random House. 

3.  Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (1998), Madison: University of Wisconsin Press

4.  Edward Relph, Place and Placelessness (2022), New York: SAGE Publications Ltd. p.8 

5.  Jeremy Davies, The Birth of the Anthropocene (2018), California: University of California Press. p.2