Jakob Kudsk Steensen

The Ephemeral Lake
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Inspired by Caspar David Friedrich

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987 in Denmark; lives and works in Berlin) creates immersive installations that bring typically overlooked or endangered ecosystems to life in virtual simulations. Kudsk Steensen’s latest work is inspired by Caspar David Friedrich and presented at Hamburger Kunsthalle on the occasion of the painter’s 250th anniversary. It investigates a captivating natural phenomenon: ephemeral lakes, bodies of water that periodically appear in arid, barren, and often desert-like landscapes. The artist has created a site-specific installation for the Kunsthalle, consisting of video, sound, light, and sculptural elements. The soundscape was developed in close collaboration with Okkyung Lee and Lugh O'Neill.

The publication The Ephemeral Lake offers a gateway into the multilayered world and the starting point of the project—research trips to the ephemeral lakes of the desert regions in the US undertaken by the artist. Essays by Claire L. Evans, Liz Stumpf, and Ulrich Schrauth further give an introduction to the artist’s visionary practice, and Alexander Klar (director of Hamburger Kunsthalle) examines the parallels in the practice of Caspar David Friedrich and Jakob Kudsk Steensen. In a conversation with writer and curator Shumon Basar the artist talks about his sources of inspiration: video gaming, landscape painting, and science fiction. Excerpts from the short story Man-O-War by renowned author Claire Vaye Watkins provide a new dimension to Steensen's view of the vast desert scenery of the American West.