Cooking Sections: It’s a term we coined in 2015 to think of different systems and how to use food to understand them. We use food to understand those systems and how they are adapting to the new seasons of the climate crisis. It starts from the idea that the seasons that we grew up with have become or are becoming more and more obsolete. For example, when you go to the supermarket, you find pretty much anything all year round because of these standardized and intensive ways of producing food. So we started thinking about what it would mean to eat according to the new seasons that are being generated by humans because of the industrialization of the world. Like a season of drought or a season of polluted oceans or a season of flash floods. And that’s when we started thinking of these possible ingredients, variations that on the one hand are becoming more common in places they were not before, but at the same time also possible scenarios we can imagine to address them.

CS: Well, I think for us, more than the convivial aspect – which is also important for us – it is more about how to think of food as an infrastructure, especially thinking about systemic change at the levels of governance as well as policy-making and how to bring different allies into these struggles towards food justice. And to do that, we like to operate at different levels. Of course, people get together to eat and it’s very important. But even if that sometimes becomes part of our work, the focus is more on infrastructural change that doesn’t stay at the level of the individual. Too often, the responsibility of a malfunctioning of a system is put on people’s individual habits instead of thinking more systemically. For example, why are food corporations allowed to use certain pesticides and then make people pay three times more in the supermarket for food that doesn’t have those chemicals or poison? We want to put more emphasis on those layers, not only on the conviviality of people getting together and eating nice food.

CS: It has also been made polarized, right? People grew up with it for centuries and it was something very embedded in everyday life. But because of the industrialization of food, especially after the Second World War, more and more people have become disconnected from food and food has become more disconnected from landscapes and the natural seasons because of different so-called technological modernizations. But that has also created a whole series of problems. And that’s where we think this divide appeared. It has become really politicized and, actually, should be even more politicized because it’s a real struggle. Food production is now driven by corporate profit, like many other extractive industries in the world. There is that gap that needs to be bridged. And it’s not easy.

CS: For us, it’s important to use cultural platforms to, on the one hand, raise awareness about these connections, while it is also very important to imagine a new, possible future. We need to start thinking about how we can end some of these extractive practices or toxic ways of farming. And to do that, we need to imagine better worlds. Which is what we try to do in our work, to pick some of these cases or stories from our research and then amplify them. For instance, one particular case is the whole body of work around farmed salmon and the synthetic colors that are used to pigment the flesh of the fish. The fish are grown in intensive farms underwater and because of deficiencies in their industrialized diet, their flesh doesn’t turn pink, the way people expect them to look. So, artificial coloring is used to compensate for it. In this particular case, we use the illusion of color to expose and reveal how the production of farmed fish creates serious new problems. It is not just an aesthetic problem in terms of color, but that fake color that is illustrative of the problem with the entire system.

CS: Definitely. But we first need to understand that we’ve been forced to disconnect. Because people were not disconnected that long ago. We need to think of the externalities. In order to make food affordable and to feed the world, some of these very intensive and toxic practices have been heavily subsidized by governments without thinking of the long-term future of the soil or the long-term future of our bodies. [Our bodies] are becoming increasingly infertile because of exposure to some of the pesticides that are used in to lower the costs of the production of food. So, at what cost does cheap food actually come, at what cost to the environment, at what cost to our bodies? At the moment, cheap food is cheap because of these subsidies to corporate profit-oriented enterprises, but also because it doesn’t take into account the long-term effects and who is doing what with those externalities. If you were to include the price of cleaning the waterways from pesticides, would it be that cheap then? The problem is that those costs are not included in the price of food. For us, it’s about making these connections visible. It’s not people deciding to disconnect from food, it is enterprises that have been severing those connections.

CS: Yes, of course. There are a lot of farmers that are doing incredible work in many parts of the world, who try to resist those corporate structures and still take care of the land and the soil for future generations. And there’s a lot of initiatives. I think the problem sometimes is that they feel that society demands a lot from them in terms of ecology, but no one is really supporting them in the way that some of these more industrialized food production systems are subsidized. So, on the one hand, they have to bear the risks of failure because sometimes the weather doesn’t help, especially if you don’t use chemicals to mitigate. And, on the other hand, it’s a social responsibility they feel that people demand from them. That is a huge psychological load to carry. There needs to be more support for long-term visions and for food production that takes care of both humans and the soil.

CS: Demanding more infrastructural change. Governments should support, for instance, open source seeds without copyright or patents by multinational corporations so that farmers don’t need to pay for seeds that are climate resilient. We need to have open source seeds for farmers so they can decide on their future and what they want to grow without paying because that’s how humanity has always been. Another infrastructural change we need to demand from government: Think of when we go to the supermarket. We are put in a personal quandary and a financial bind, where we have to choose if we want to pay three times more not to be poisoned, instead of the government just banning these pesticides from the start. These kinds of choices are then up to people’s habits and the information they have instead of governments and corporations taking the responsibility.

CS: Exactly.

CS: It’s hard to say… We just believe in the work we are interested in and it doesn’t have to do with being more or less common. We love allies. We’d like to have more allies and people do it more at work. But yeah, there are many issues in the world and each one focuses inwards.

CS: We’ve been working a lot within the climate framework and thinking about the future seasons. For instance, in a season of drought and there is a lack of water or water scarcity, let’s think of more drought-resistant crops. Or if there is a season of soil exhaustion because so many chemicals have been applied that the soil is dead, what kinds of rotation of crops can nourish the soil in the same way that we nourish our bodies? These are the kinds of ingredients we try to find, but we also look at ways of growing them that support ecological systems, not just addressing the ingredients themselves.

CS: We need to familiarize ourselves with the local plants that are available. For example, in the south of Italy, there are all of these wild plants, nut trees and varieties of vegetables that don’t require irrigation. So, on the one hand, familiarize ourselves with them, and then create a demand.

CS: Again, that depends on where you live and where you are. For example, on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, where we did the project on farmed salmon, we’ve been working a lot with alternative aquaculture, mainly oysters, mussels and seaweeds that contribute to oxygenated water as they grow. Seaweed, for instance, is an ingredient that in Scotland had been used for generations but has been forgotten, especially since industrialized food production started after the Second World War. We look at how to recover some of these cultural legacies for the sake of history, but also as foods for the future. They are incredible sources of protein and many other compounds that our bodies need, but have been disregarded. So, it is crucial to reconnect with these ingredients, but it all depends on where you live and what the main issue at stake is. For example, if you live on the coast and you have fish farms nearby, how can you transition to alternative aquaculture? If you’re in an area that is experiencing increasing drought, how can you grow vegetables that do not require irrigation? And so on.

CS: What we can do is to ask questions, ask yourself why is this available? Why is this not available? It’s a lot about information and talking to people and thinking. For example, if you are in a dry environment affected by drought, look at why there are not so many ingredients that respond to drought. Because the moment you start pulling the thread and tracing it, then you understand all the actors that are involved, and then you can demand change. It’s not easy to do it on an individual level. But, we have to because it’s our everyday life and we need to constantly make good choices. And there is a lot of work to be done on a wider, infrastructure level.

Christopher Hartmann: The initial starting point was the first lockdown in 2020. My previous work was very figure-heavy, about flesh and skin. All my work is staged to a certain degree, I take photographs before I paint. During the lockdown, I wasn’t able or allowed to take images of people, that’s when I became more interested in clothes and suggesting a certain presence through the absence of figures. I was staring at a pile of clothes at home and noticed the movement of the fabrics and impression of the body.

The first room in my exhibition is just empty bed sheets, empty beds — what I am most interested in is the absence of the body, to suggest with an imprint of a body that a body was there. With the fabrics, it creates a different type or relationship between the paintings and the viewer. Through the fabrics and textiles, the viewer can interpret the motif I am portraying through their own experience.

I am a controlled messy person. Not to reinforce stereotypes, but I’m a typical Capricorn, and on top of that I am German — always in control. My studio can get messy sometimes, but I have it under control. At a certain point, I have to clean. I also don’t mind mess, as long as it is my mess and I have some kind of overview of it, but if it is somebody else’s mess, I do get a bit crazy about it.

The pile of clothes I paint are very staged and composed – I spend hours on them. Some of my scenes are more natural states, but they exist in a place between staged and natural. Very often, a still life starts with me seeing something on the floor or on the couch. I then take a few pictures and start to remove or add something to make an interesting composition. I am aware that the end goal is painting.

As a man, it feels like the most authentic thing I can do: paint men and show things from my perspective. If you had asked me three or four years ago, I would have told you that my work is a reflection of my belief that there aren’t any fixed ideas of masculinity, but in 2023, I don’t think so much about gender norms.

There is a certain vulnerability and tenderness to the paintings, which is in contrast to a traditional sense of masculinity — but it’s not a groundbreaking new idea. For me, tenderness, vulnerability and masculinity go hand in hand. These aspects are intrinsically human, regardless of gender, sex or whatever. It is the way I am and how I relate to people in my life.

Obviously, I can’t separate myself from my environment. I grew up in Bavaria, in an ultra-Catholic environment, so I am aware of the traditional view of masculinity. But maybe it is tied to leaving home. Sometimes I wonder if I am in a bubble, living in London, in the art world, thinking that people are very openminded and less fixated on certain ideas.

Five years ago, I was pushing ideas of sexuality and masculinity. But now, my work has become a bit more supple and tender. Maybe this also has to do with age. There is something about the subtleness that I find more interesting, showing more, but being less explicit.

My most recent work in LA was about longing and belonging and exploring the idea of home. I had just moved into a new flat in London and the starting point of that was me just staring into an empty bed. The idea of starting over was heartbreaking. I was staring at the bed and thinking about where you sleep at night and where you define your home.

Now, I am much more interested in abstraction. Instead of painting a person who looks nostalgic or painting a fleshy intimate scene, I am interested in depicting atmospheres that express nostalgia or show an intimate state of mind.

I am interested in that duality — absence points towards a presence and a presence points towards an absence. Each provokes something different in the viewer. You can very much relate to an empty bed, and it can be very confronting, but two figures are much more explicit, much more specific, and about interpretations of the poses and action. But I like telling stories across this juxtaposition.

Jeewi Lee (JL): My fascination with sand began about three years ago during a residency in Portugal. Initially, it was the aesthetic qualities that caught my attention—the striking orange and ochre hues of the sand along the coastline, which seemed almost luminous under sunlight. This fascination with its color and form led to a deeper, more conceptual engagement. This material, often overlooked as mundane, carries incredible geological and metaphorical weight. I started researching sand and quickly realized its paradoxical nature: it’s seemingly infinite yet finite, a resource deeply embedded in our everyday lives, but also one that’s rapidly depleting due to overuse and exploitation. At the same time, I found it deeply personal, as I began to reflect on its biographical connections to my own life.

JL: As a child, I moved frequently, often every two or three years, which made it difficult for me to establish a sense of belonging or connection to a single place. This rootlessness shaped me profoundly, and I struggled with feeling ‘out of place.’ In working with sand, I realized it follows a similar trajectory. Sand is created by movement—the more a grain travels, the more polished and rounded it becomes, bearing the marks of its journey. This parallel between my personal experiences and the life of a grain of sand was both a revelation and a source of comfort.

JL: Each sample of sand in the exhibition tells a story tied to its place of origin. I collected sand from sites with personal or artistic significance, such as the West Coast of South Korea, Dakar, New York City, Mallorca, and Alentejo in Portugal. The process was intimate; each grain felt like a fragment of a larger narrative. In Senegal, for example, the sand’s tar-rich tones stood out, while in Mallorca, I discovered tiny fossilized coral and shell fragments. These characteristics became the foundation for both the paintings and sculptures in the exhibition.

JL: The sand paintings and sculptures complement each other: versatility and individuality. The paintings are often monochromatic, though some have delicate gradients. Just like the subtle variations within the sand from each site. On the other hand, the sculptures, magnified many times from individual sand grains, transform the microscopic into the monumental. I was only able to realize this complex project together with geometry researcher Phillip C. Reiner. The sculptures reveal the textures and forms that are usually invisible to the naked eye. Together, these pieces highlight sand’s dual role as both a ubiquitous material and a vessel for unique histories.

JL: Sand is deeply symbolic. Each grain is unique, shaped by millions of years of erosion and migration. Yet, in a mass, its individuality often seems lost. This mirrors humanity: we often perceive ourselves as insignificant within a crowd, but each person, like each grain, carries their own story. Additionally, I was struck by the fossilized remains embedded in sand—miniature time capsules of past ecologies and landscapes. These “embodied memories”, as I call them, underscore the passage of time and the interplay between permanence and impermanence.

JL: One memorable challenge was translating the sculptures from the microscopic to detailed visibility. The difficulty began with selecting the “right” sand grain—one that could represent the material’s complexity. Transporting these grains to the Zeiss laboratory posed its own issues. Early on, we used simple envelopes for mailing the grains. On one occasion, two grains arrived instead of one. For days, we puzzled over this “spontaneous division” until realizing the grain had broken under the pressure of the postal stamp. Still, it became unusable… Another time, a grain seemed lost entirely. Imagine the panic! Eventually, it was discovered wedged inside the cap of its container.

Once at Zeiss, the process of nano-CT scanning required exceptional precision to capture the intricate structure of each grain. Afterward, magnifying the scans into sculptures via 3D sand printing presented additional hurdles, including managing weight, structural integrity, and surface texture. It’s an extensive, technical process. Each step required meticulous collaboration among artists, engineers, and scientists to bring these grains to life as monumental forms. Especially, in this context, Phillip C. Reininger’s knowledge in Geometry was substantial. 

JL: This duality is central to the exhibition. Each grain carries traces of ancient landscapes, such as coral reefs or volcanic eruptions, but when enlarged, they evoke human-made structures. One sculpture, for example, resembles a column. It’s unmistakable! It’s also a hint at our innate tendency to seek patterns and familiarity.

JL: Yes! This interplay between the natural and the constructed creates a tension. This tension is the coexistence of past and present, and that is exactly what I want to make tangible in my work.

JL: My work often seeks to make the invisible visible. With Fields of Fragments, I aim to draw attention to the overlooked—the sand beneath our feet, a resource we take for granted yet rely on immensely. Similarly, in MUTE, I explored the subtle boundaries between presence and absence, sound and silence. Both projects encourage a tolerance for ambiguity, inviting viewers to sit with complexity rather than seeking definitive answers. We both know each other from my work at the Skulpturenpark Schlossgut Schwante. There, I created a site-specific piece that must literally be sought out. I found a tree with a branch that had been amputated, leaving a void. I replaced the missing branch with a prosthesis—a cast bronze replica that fills the gap and is secured to the tree. The piece engages questions of oxidation and whether, over the years, the bronze will stand out or blend seamlessly with the tree, which at the time of installation made the prosthesis nearly indistinguishable. Ultimately, I hope to evoke a sense of wonder and reflection about our place within larger systems, be they ecological, social, or temporal.

JL: Or: Attempting to see the world from the perspective of a grain of sand. In the end, the complexity of the bigger picture is not so different after all (smiles).