Opening on Friday, September 12, 2025, 7-9 pm
The artist will be present
Vast expanse, water, and ceaseless change characterize the Wadden Sea—a landscape remade by the rhythm of the tides every six hours. Alfred Ehrhardt once saw it as “elemental forces at work.” Hamburg photographer Marc-Oliver Schulz views the tidal flats in a different light. He is also repeatedly drawn to the North Sea coast, but unlike Alfred Ehrhardt, his attention is focused not on structures or moods, but on the act of seeing itself. His series Wasserland (Water Land), comprising thirty-five photographs, is being exhibited in Berlin for the first time.
From 2009 to 2017, Schulz regularly visited the Elbe estuary between Büsum and Cuxhaven, a place between land and water. He would wait around on the stone groynes in the open tidal flats, for the moment when the boundaries between landscape, light, and time begin to blur. His photographs are often taken at dusk or at night, when the horizon seemingly dissolves into the starry sky. Analogous to the brief respite in powerful currents at the turning point of the tide, his images portray a standstill within the ceaseless flow of change. The conceptual rigor and reduction of pictorial elements abstract the landscape, elevating its sparse beauty to a universal level. The emptiness and vastness of the Wadden Sea hone the perception in the absence of narrative. A way of seeing focused on objects gives way to an open-ended, intentionless gaze. In the image, location becomes secondary, and the status of the landscape becomes all-defining. The act of seeing determines the image.
In contrast with Alfred Ehrhardt, Marc-Oliver Schulz does not obscure traces of human civilization. For instance, the navigational markers used for seafaring are a recurring pictorial element and identifying feature throughout the entire series. In each image, stone groynes, wooden barriers, oil rigs, or the lights of coastal towns allude to the presence of humans who must contend with the sea on a daily basis—caught between land reclamation and land loss. The stone wall on which the photographer stands—and we as viewers with him—thus becomes a symbolic fault line between nature and humanity.