BERLIN.- Sand, one of the most ordinary materials underfoot, becomes a subject of close scrutiny and unexpected beauty in “To See the World in a Grain of Sand,” an exhibition bringing together the work of Matthias Burba and Max Seeger at the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung in Berlin. The exhibition remains on view through September 6, 2026.
At its center are the microphotographs of Matthias Burba, born in 1954, a forensic scientist and synesthete who has assembled a collection of roughly 800 sand samples from locations around the world. Seen through a polarizing microscope, the grains lose their familiar appearance and become vivid compositions of color, texture, and fractured light.
Burba uses light and filters to draw out the particular characteristics of each sample. The resulting photographs can resemble abstract paintings, but their visual qualities also contain information about the mineral composition of the grains and, in some cases, their geographical origins.
Rather than treating sand as an anonymous material, Burba approaches each sample as a record of place and time. Weathering, erosion, movement, and geological transformation accumulated over millions of years are compressed into objects small enough to rest on a fingertip.
The exhibition's title invokes William Blake's famous idea of seeing a world in a grain of sand, using the microscopic as a way of contemplating much larger systems. Here, that poetic perspective meets scientific observation, with individual grains becoming miniature archives of geological history.
A second perspective comes from Max Seeger, born in 1994, whose participatory video installation Ingrained moves away from the individual grain and toward the wider networks in which sand circulates. Digital imagery and documentary elements combine to examine the material's place within contemporary environmental, industrial, and economic systems.
That wider context gives the exhibition a more urgent dimension. Sand is not simply a substance associated with beaches and deserts. As a source of silicon dioxide, it plays a central role in modern life, providing material used in products ranging from microchips and smartphones to solar cells and optical technologies.
It is also essential to construction. Concrete production, land reclamation, coastal defenses, and major infrastructure projects all depend on particular kinds of sand, and not every deposit has the properties required for those purposes.
According to material provided by the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung, growing global demand has increasingly turned sand into a scarce and contested resource, with prices rising by as much as 6,500 percent over the past two decades. Intensive extraction has also contributed to the destruction of beaches and riverbanks in some regions and can increase the vulnerability of coastlines already threatened by rising sea levels.
By placing Burba's almost jewel-like microscopic images alongside Seeger's broader investigation of sand's global circulation, “To See the World in a Grain of Sand” moves between wonder and unease. What begins with the beauty of a single grain ultimately opens onto questions of geology, memory, technology, consumption, and ecological pressure.
The exhibition is accompanied by two public programs. On August 27 at 7 p.m., Moritz Ohlig, curator at the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg, will give an illustrated lecture titled “Sand – Resource, Life, Longing. An Exhibition at Museum Sinclair-Haus.” On September 3 at 6 p.m., Matthias Burba and Dr. Christiane Stahl will lead a guided tour of the exhibition.
“To See the World in a Grain of Sand” is on view through September 6, 2026, at the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung, Auguststr. 75, Berlin. The foundation is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
