DIORAMA, 2023

Stefan Knauf, * Munich 1990, lives and works in Berlin. He explores the ideological and colonial structures that continuously shape the world through design and space-making practices, particularly with regard to the landscape and the natural world. His diverse practice probes the history of botany, migration, trade, science, and architecture to uncover concrete paradoxes in our misperception of nature as something inherently stable, wild, or uncultured. Knauf’s recent research has led him to countless ecosystem restoration initiatives around the world, where governments and companies are effectively attempting to “re-create” previously destroyed or eroded natural environments.

With these various symbolic and formal references, Knauf outlines a political history of human geoengineering and points to how our understanding of nature, technology, and their interrelation continue to blur the lines between the natural and artificial.

Robert Grunenberg is an emerging contemporary art gallery founded in April 2018 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.