Max Hooper Schneider explores the intersections between ecology, technology, and relationality in his artistic practice. With a background in landscape architecture and marine biology, Schneider presents an alternative reality of a post-human world through various means such as dioramic miniature landscapes, uranium glass sculptures, electroplated plants, microscopic cinema, and aquariums filled with human artefacts and marine organisms. In this reality, described by the artist as "trans-habitat", everything undergoes continuous morphogenesis and autopoiesis. Schneider constructs or simulates unique ecologies devoid of human presence, highlighting the interconnections between different worlds, species, and entities, blurring the boundaries between the living and non-living, and the organic and inorganic.
The exhibition centres around the concept of the 'Traumatic Sublime,' which explores the marvels and horror that emerge in the aftermath of ecological collapse or 'geotraumas' caused by humans. Through continuous technological reinvention, Hooper Schneider showcases new material forms and amalgamations, creating immersive experiences that challenge viewers to reconsider their anthropocentric positioning and perspectives on life, death, and the material states. The exhibition is curated by UCCA curator Luan Shixuan.
Max Hooper Schneider's polymathic practice brings together the fields of biology, philosophy, and landscape architecture to create objects and environments that speculate on entropic forces and post-human forms. Hooper Schneider develops and explores the aesthetics of succession, abandonment, and the uncanny through habitat-like artworks that materialise and dramatise natural and artificial systems.
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art is China’s leading contemporary art institution. Committed to the belief that art can deepen lives and transcend boundaries, UCCA presents a wide range of exhibitions, public programs, and research initiatives to a public of more than one million visitors each year. UCCA Beijing sits at the heart of the 798 Art District, occupying 10,000 square meters of factory chambers built in 1957 and regenerated in 2019 by OMA. UCCA Dune, designed by Open Architecture, lies beneath the sand in the seaside enclave of Aranya in Beidaihe.
