HAMBURG, Germany — Within the Nineteen Twenties, Hamburg-born artwork historian Aby Warburg assembled his famed Mnemosyne Atlas — an enormous, unfinished compendium of uncaptioned photos on 40 categorized panels. Across the identical time, he put collectively his Picture Assortment on the Historical past of Astrology and Astronomy, an identical array of images on panels illustrating that people have at all times appeared to the heavens to know themselves and the world, each scientifically and spiritually.
Created for the Hamburg Planetarium’s opening in 1930, the latter work was proven there as World Conflict II broke out. For many years, the unique assortment was thought-about misplaced, till artwork historian Uwe Fleckner discovered it in a trash heap in 1987. Its Fleckner-curated reconstruction is now on view within the uppermost portion of identical planetarium because the cornerstone of From the Cosmos to the Commons — a constellation of exhibitions, public artworks, and discursive occasions orbiting Warburg’s opus in numerous places in Hamburg till late August, in an formidable undertaking initiated by town curator, Joanna Warsza.
Set up view of Aby Warburg’s Picture Assortment within the Hamburg Planetarium
Guests use flashlights to see Warburg’s densely adorned panels, organized in a compact elliptical parcours within the usually inaccessible, low-light house atop the Planetarium. Reproductions of drawings and diagrams of the sky, and its many associated legends, hint the histories of planetary pondering from antiquity to Kepler’s concepts of heliocentricity, Dante’s world view, Jap and Western astrological symbolism, and rather more.
That is the purpose of departure for the present, which considers the wonderment, concern, and humility that the skies have at all times evoked in our species — but in addition the bodily and religious orientation the heavens have constantly offered. In the identical darkish room, 4 modern artworks discover house, time, and the way nonwestern cultures noticed or see the heavens: “Blood Moon” (2025) by Raqs Media Collective asks us to contemplate the lunar facets of time, and “Iktómiwiŋ (A Vision of Standing Cloud)” (2023/25), an intricate mandala-like flooring piece by Oglála Lakȟóta artist KITE, information each time and goals (this iteration is made from native stones).
Open air, within the adjoining Stadtpark, 12 sculptural works are scattered across the lawns, bushes, and clearings to be found by artwork lovers and joggers alike: Agnes Denes’s “Sunflower Fields”(2025) binds earth and sky with planted sun-loving blooms, whereas Heidi Voet’s “Hydra & the Orange Giant” (2025) brings the heavens all the way down to earth — her pastel concrete sports activities balls lie within the grass within the Stadtpark’s previous pure amphitheater reflecting the constellation Hydra. Nonetheless others take a look at divination, like Xul Photo voltaic’s “Tarot Deck” (1954), a set of outsized tarot playing cards on the park garden; or cosmological legends, equivalent to Hoda Tawakol’s “Cosmic Womb,” an set up depicting Nut, the Egyptian goddess who swallowed the solar every night time, and rebirthed it every morning.
Heidi Voet, “Hydra & the Orange Giant” (2025) within the Hamburg Stadtpark’s previous amphitheater
Throughout city at Kunsthaus Hamburg, a second a part of the undertaking, titled Between Stars and Indicators, flips these themes round. Whereas Warburg’s picture assortment locations equal weight on rational and irrational, this group present highlights how the skies at the moment are surveilling us: Document-keeping, exact data-gathering, and algorithms have, in any case, dramatically shifted what humanity orients itself upon. Works together with numbers 211 and 248 of Trevor Paglen’s Clouds collection, which turns an algorithmic gaze to the sky, and Nolan Oswald Dennis’s “recurse 4 a late planet (lush)” (2025), a wealthy diagram that considers the connections between asteroids and rocks thrown in protest, appear to ask: What are our cosmologies as we speak?
Wars, local weather chaos, and digital intelligence are simply a few of what make this second in human historical past one in every of nice communal disorientation, fragmented notion, and temporal confusion. From the Cosmos to the Commons doesn’t allow us to conveniently neglect this, however quite reminds us, maybe in a reassuring, life-affirming method, that humanity has struggled to elucidate and orient itself underneath the identical skies since time immemorial. These works appear to nudge us to rethink extra intuitive methods of present, even thriving, in creation’s vastness … collectively.
KITE, “Iktómiwiŋ (A Vision of Standing Cloud)” (2023/25)
Xul Photo voltaic, “Tarot Deck” (1954)
Element of Nolan Oswald Dennis’s “recurse 4 a late planet (lush)”
From the Cosmos to the Commons continues on the Hamburg Planetarium (Linnering 1, Hamburg, Germany) and Kunsthaus Hamburg (Klosterwall 15, Hamburg, Germany) by means of August 24. The exhibition was organized by Joanna Warsza, who curated the Stadtpark portion. The Planetarium portion was curated by Uwe Fleckner and the Kunsthaus Hamburg portion was curated by Anna Nowak.
