BERLIN.- Michael Wutz’s approach to landscape is shaped by his interest in archeology, anthropology and geomorphology. He views landscape not as a static form or surface but as embedded within a permanent transformation process.

For Anatomy of a Landscape Wutz has borrowed from the imagery of academic textbooks and museum presentation panels. He has interlaced timelines of geology and cultural history with the intellectual history of (post-)modern times using the evolutionary phases of scientific illustration as way markers. Weaving these and other timelines together places historic classification systems within a new construct. Research itself—and therefore its history— become subjects to be classified and critically reexamined.

In a further approach that incorporates graphic reproduction, an award-winning medium for the artist, Wutz draws geological/archeological subject matter on metal plates in illustrative styles that correspond to specific periods in the history of art and illustration. The plates are then submitted to a unique etching process that uses a continual flow of acid, thereby simulating natural erosive processes. These landscape models are used to create new graphic works that reflect the exhibition's transformative etching process. The results are included in a portfolio of graphic works available for purchase through SATELLITE BERLIN.

The exhibition begins with a hypothesis and an installation that is both laboratory experiment and museum diorama. Wutz’s referencing and manipulation of institutional imagery, archeological documents and historical errors challenge our understanding of scientific discovery and speculation, reality and fiction. An artist book will be published in the guise of a scientific journal dedicated to a fictive amateur archeologist and his controversial findings.