Lee Mackinnon, Department of Photography, LCC

The first known image of a glacier was of Vernagtferner in the Austrian Ötztal Alps, painted in water-colour by Abraham Jäger in 1601. Watercolour paints are suspended pigment in a water-based solution that can be dissolved into pools of colour. For the painter, these pools simulate a world from which their very material was extracted. This kind of circularity is a remarkable and often overlooked aspect of the visual arts. One that becomes increasingly pertinent in an age of ecological emergency. The work of Stefan Shlumpf is an address to audiences in thrall to the modernist aesthetic: an audience mesmerised by beauty and simplicity at the expense of physical processes.

The distillation of complex material causality in these works acts as a subtle reminder of the detail we can so easily overlook in favour of effect. They are at once abstract representation and an implicit diagram of environmental collapse. The photography studio here is a field of action in which the means reflect the ends: blocks of CO2 hover and dissolve in memory of ancient archetypes, once recuperated by minimalist artworks: the untitled stacks of Donald Judd; the bricks of Piero Manzoni; the ice enclosures of Allan Kaprow. Previous works record the polypropylene wrapping of glaciers designed to limit the effects of the sun. Again, the works of Jean and Claude Christo are brought to mind. What is also brought to mind are the myriad ways in which humans have addressed, and ‘dressed,’ the landscape for their own consumption and pleasure. Or as a means of defending it from their own toxicity whilst accelerating its demise.