The project extends that threshold forward using two centuries of actual climate data. A three-dimensional reconstruction of Friedrich’s composition is altered according to recorded temperature increases and glacier retreat, running continuously from 1824 to 2024 in a five-minute animation: the ice fractures, the ship gradually disappears, and by 2025 almost nothing solid remains. Thirteen charcoal drawings (100 × 130 cm each, framed with passe-partout and oak frame) translate specific decades of that simulation by hand — 1823–24, 1890, 1910, 1930, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2015, and 2025 — each one both an image and a document of loss. Charcoal itself is carbon, made from burned organic matter, which Kessler treats as an apt material for rendering the history of climate collapse: a record of combustion recording a record of warming.
Works
Installation views
