BERLIN.- Photographer Arno Schidlowski (b. 1975) presents two series of works at the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung, Jasmund and Der Sonne Mond, which offer different approaches to landscape. His exclusively analog and handmade photographs are the result of drawn-out working processes and an intensive engagement with nature and light. Jasmund is dedicated to a frequently observed location shaped by culture, while Der Sonne Mond evokes an inner landscape that cannot be pinned down to any specific location. In both groups of works, Schidlowski draws on strategies of Romanticism, transforming them into a precise, contemplative observation of nature aligned with the tradition of Alfred Ehrhardt.

The Jasmund series (2005–2011) transports viewers to the island of Rügen, to the chalk cliffs and beech forests made world-famous by Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings. Over the course of several years, Schidlowski repeatedly returned to this location in search of "fitting images" of a landscape deeply anchored in cultural memory. Rather than adhering to the clichés of romantic imagery, he developed a perspective that explores the contradiction between external representation and internal perception. His photographs are quiet, reduced, and concentrated, yet intensely colorful. In the rhythmic sequence of his photographs—a kind of visual cadence—image fragments of ocean surfaces, treetops, or fog-shrouded horizons unfold into a space of poetic resonance that simultaneously questions the myth of this romantically intoned location.

In the following years, from 2011 to 2013, the work Der Sonne Mond was created in direct response to Jasmund. For this photo series, Schidlowski left the north and turned his gaze toward an elusive southern landscape. A selection of his black-and-white baryta prints evoke a Mediterranean-like atmosphere that resists being pinned-down geographically; rather, it is an inner landscape lacking any clear orientational markers. The title of the series arose from the idea of entering Earth as if it were foreign terrain: with the gaze of an outsider, curious, open, and free of expectations. Cypresses, withered shrubs, or thistles on arid ground appear reduced to abstraction in the glaring light, while other motifs appear dark and mysterious. Here, too, Schidlowski plays with reminiscences of the past: the photographs recall historical images; as if from another time, akin to slightly glossy albumen paper or solarized overexposures. The reduced, ethereal motifs oscillate between dream and memory. The dialectical tension between familiarity and strangeness gives rise to a poetic density that releases the gaze from objects and things, transporting the viewer into a state of meditative suspension.

Both groups of works share an intense engagement with nature: Schidlowski opens himself up to landscapes, reacts to them, and finds his place within them. His photographs draw on the strategies of Romanticism, but reinterpret them—not as drama or emotional outbursts, but as contemplative experiences. Schidlowski’s precise observation of nature and intense engagement with it are aligned with a tradition that points to Alfred Ehrhardt. The works are aesthetically powerful, conceptually clear, and at the same time immediately accessible.

The exhibition features around fifty works, supplemented by the complete series arranged in portfolios inside two display cases. All prints originate from the artist’s own darkroom.

Arno Schidlowski (b. 1975, Münster) lives near Hamburg. After graduating in visual communication from Dortmund University of Applied Sciences in 2006, he completed a master’s degree under Prof. Ute Mahler at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in 2013. Since then, he has been represented by Jo van de Loo, Munich, with solo exhibitions, acquisitions, and participation in art fairs in Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London, and Vienna.