Angelika J. Trojnarski – In search of a deeper understanding of the world

A childhood in the natural world of Masuria
 

Trojnarski’s passion for nature and her keen interest in natural phenomena is rooted in her childhood in Masuria, the largest lakeland region in Poland, where she grew up between 1979 and 1989 in a landscape that was still intact. Early images, smells and moods that have been ingrained in her memory reappear every so often in her work, alongside new ideas and impressions gained from research trips to other places. All around the large number of lakes and waterways in Masuria, there are huge tracts of forest, the remnants of ancient jungles, which are home to unique flora and fauna. Even today, this still makes the region a real paradise for people seeking a life surrounded by and in harmony with the natural environment. During her childhood, these forests, lakes and moors were places of endless discovery for the artist.

Trojnarski formed her own impressions of the natural world by taking every opportunity to get out into nature, ideally to places where no paths had been trod, observing anthills which at that time were so high that they almost towered over her, or swimming in dark lakes, always wary of leeches and eddies in the water. Here, she spent hours collecting fossils of petrified cephalopods, for example, “belemnites” which had survived from another age and which partially protruded from out of the soil. These cephalopod skeletons, also known as “thunderbolts”, which are about the size of a finger, have been left behind from the time when the melted water from glaciers created the lakeland region with its more than 3,000 lakes and waterways which now covers Masuria. Originally, the area was directly connected to the sea, since the cephalopods’ only natural habitat was along the edges of marine coasts. Without any knowledge of this background information, the relics from bygone eras were a source of indeterminate fascination for Trojnarski, mingling with incidental observations and memories of afternoons spent by a lake, with dry grasslands which in her child’s eyes stretched for ever, and with the various smells of nature that unfolded in the summer heat or after a storm. Every so often these memories would return in her memory, so that years later, they would play an important part in her artistic output, in which nature plays a central role. 

 

Artistic exploration of natural phenomena
 

Angelika J. Trojnarski’s work is grounded in a detailed contemplation of nature and the observation of physical processes. Her subjects include stormy winds, polar lights, lightning and thunderstorms, examining the extent to which nature unleashes its forces. In most cases, these forces themselves are invisible; only traces of them and their impact can be seen. Angelika J. Trojnarski transforms these immaterial processes into a visual form. From clouds driven by the wind, flowing water and lightning cutting through the air to the light from the rays of the sun – all these images show naturally flowing energies. 

Here, light phenomena arising from electromagnetic processes is an endless source of fascination for the artist. She engages in depth with the subject, learning about electricity in the atmosphere and studying the work of the Croatian scientist Nikola Tesla in detail. In her works, energy, tension and the emotionality of light then appear in a charged relationship (Fiat Lux, 2018/19) and she succeeds in bringing forth a truly phenomenal force: polar lights are combined with lightning strokes and fire; together, they form a vortex of blindingly white and violet light rays, which hit the ground with an almost palpable impact. By contrast, in Petrichor (2019), a powerful summer thunderstorm, charged up with crosshatching, is shown, a break in the clouds flooded with light which conjoins the sun with violet lightning discharges. The title refers to the smell of summer rain when the drops hit the hot, very dry ground, thus evoking a mood remembered by the artist from her childhood, and which is familiar to us all. However, we are increasingly being confronted with natural events which we have never experienced until now.

 

The Anthropocene
 

Through her works, the artist aims to increase awareness of natural phenomena, not only because such events are particularly and unusually beautiful, but because she recognises our responsibility for nature and the natural processes which are now being disturbed by human behaviour. She reminds us of the fragility of our planet and the ecological crisis it faces by highlighting the impact of the Anthropocene in her work. For a long time now, we have attempted to forcibly harness physical forces and processes in our very own destructive dynamic, without turning our attention to the huge extent to which all phenomena and events are interconnected. In so doing, we are wearing down the Earth’s resources and exhausting the planet through our consumption. As a result, we have reached a state in which nature, which has always had its own, unique self-regulatory system, is responding to our actions, sometimes with unexpected vehemence. These reactions testify to the huge complexity of our planet. 

In 2000, Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen coined the term “the Anthropocene” to describe the dominant geophysical impact of humankind on the Earth’s system.[1] However, long before they did so, the chemist James Lovelock, in collaboration with the microbiologist Lynn Margulis, had already investigated the multi-layered, convoluted interrelationships between the human and the non-human. They described our planet’s ecosystem as “Gaia”, adopting a term from Greek mythology, where Gaia is the personification of the great Earth mother who was born directly from Chaos and who is the opposite of the ordered cosmos. In the language of the natural sciences today, “Chaos”, which in antiquity was used in reference to the original state of the world, is again being used in an appropriate way to describe the unforeseen nature of processes. According to the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock and Margulis from the 1970s,[2] Earth is a self-organising system which should be treated as a living organism – and not as a dead storage site for resources from which humans can take what they want as and when they choose. Once the Earth was understood as being a living thing, and began to be studied as such, the realisation took hold that it was a powerful, living aggregate of all organisms, and that the forces of nature in particular were subject to their own internal processes which outdid our human efforts by far. In the words of Lovelock: “[...] if we fail to take care of the Earth, it surely will take care of itself by making us no longer welcome.”[3] 

 

The Pyrocene
 

Angelika J. Trojnarski succeeds in creating images for the force of nature when we may have become immune to events in the news. She finds an aesthetic expression for the planet’s independent nature, made increasingly palpable and visible in the form of natural disasters, like a sick patient rearing up in an attempt to shake off insatiable parasites from their body.

In recent years, heatwaves have fanned drought on a vast scale, leading to parched soil, dried-up rivers and forests burning across the globe. Such events have become so commonplace that the artist speaks of the Earth’s fever, drawing on the term “Pyrocene”[4], which she uses as a name for a series of collages. Using real fire, with which she burns the edges of her collages and creates traces of soot, her works act as witnesses to a conflagration; they express her way of seeing the world, and are symbol and the symbolised at the same time. Trojnarski’s images testify to the risks and threats to our planet, but they are also of surprising beauty, a poetic aesthetic which unfolds by simply allowing things to emerge and paradoxes to arise. In this way, a cloud can become an infernal image of the sky instead of exuding baroque splendour. Full of dust and soot (Stress, 2019), however, it can also direct the viewer’s gaze to a discrepancy by obtaining its delicate lightness through thorny burrs – small, ornery balls that get their hooks into everything when you get too close, and which at the same time exude a brittle yet delicate elegance (Risk and Wonder, 2022). What would appear to be contradictory in nature is therefore unified in the material. Angelika J. Trojnarski never chooses this material without careful preparation. Her intensive involvement with nature and her research allow her to fully immerse herself in her subject and to search for a deeper understanding of the world through art and science. Her studio in Düsseldorf-Reisholz, which she also uses as a laboratory, contains various objects that she has brought back from her travels: magnetites, self-grown salt crystals, charred plants and pieces of tree bark. All these forms have been created by the forces of nature, like the works that are created here, testaments to a fragile era in the history of the Earth and a reminder of what needs to be preserved. 

 

Ann-Katrin Günzel, April 2024

 

Website of Angelika J. Trojnarski:
https://trojnarski.com/