Photosynthesis

Edited by Solange de Boer, Zoë Gray, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Caroline Schneider
Texts by Jesper Hoffmeyer, Maria Muhle, interview by Zoë Gray

With playful certainty, Greenfort uses detailed interventions, subtle alterations and imperceptible influences on functional processes to test ‘man’s freedom’. The processes remain intact, unchanged, yet the interventions reveal opportunities which are there to be taken. This lightness of touch allows an opposition that eschews the pompous political gesture by focusing again and again on esthetic or playful elements. In this sense, Greenfort’s work is political, but it never lets its political content become its main aim. Everything always stays the same, but slightly different. Maria Muhle

Greenfort’s art evokes a world in which animals, humans, nature, culture, science, and industry, as well as the artwork and its site, are connected by a web of complex relationships. In all of his works the Danish artist demonstrates an interest in an expanded notion of ecology, one that encompasses cultural history and sociopolitics as well as natural resources.

This first monographic book contains an essay by the renowned scientist Jesper Hoffmeyer on biosemiotics, as well as a text by Maria Muhle which discusses the artist’s work in relation to biopolitics. It was published on the occasion of Greenfort’s solo exhibition at Witte de With, 24 June – 6 August 2006.

Design by Surface, Berlin/Frankfurt am Main