Impossible Horizon – exhibition

Ewa Doroszenko project is a series of spatial photographic collages that address the theme of endangered ecosystems in the era of expansive human activity. The artist composes them from fragments of images – mainly printed screenshots – sourced from online searches of terms referring to specific places threatened by environmental degradation. Her works intertwine landscapes of glaciers, mountains, forests, and bodies of water, arranged into forms resembling geological or organic structures. The collages clearly have a post-photographic character – the image of the landscape is not so much captured as reconstructed from digital traces present in virtual space. This method challenges the classical understanding of documenting nature and reveals how contemporary technology shapes our perception of it. At the same time, the aesthetic layer of the works – the beauty of fragments of nature – contrasts with the message of its destruction. Doroszenko evokes, among others, the Alpine regions, glaciers, primeval forests, and mountain lakes – areas particularly vulnerable to climate change and human activity. Her works become metaphorical maps of disappearance, distortion, and irreversible transformation. The project combines ecological reflection with a critique of image culture and redefines the landscape as a construction built from data rather than solely from direct observation of nature.

In her artistic practice, Ewa Doroszenko points to the natural landscape as an essential and timeless theme in art. As a subject of visual art, the landscape has evolved from a backdrop for religious and mythological scenes to an independent genre reflecting cultural, philosophical, and technological changes. Its history reaches back to antiquity, and today it continues to serve as a medium affirming nature, documenting environmental degradation, while also proposing utopian visions of coexistence. Doroszenko develops this tradition by using the possibilities of post-photography to present the landscape as the intersection of the real world and its digital representations. In doing so, her works inscribe themselves into the long history of landscape in art, while simultaneously becoming a critical commentary on the condition of the environment in the era of globalization and pervasive image mediation.

Views from Impossible Horizon exhibition, Foto Forum, Bolzano, 2023, photos: Samira Mosca, Foto Forum and Jacek Doroszenko, and views from How to Travel exhibition, Propaganda / PRPGND Gallery, Warsaw, 2019, photos: Jacek Doroszenko.