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(In)visibility; the story of cryptogams
The far west of county Cork is a land shrouded in rain and mist. It is a land where links with the past are still very much alive, through stories, music and ruins. It is also a land where ancient cryptogams thrive. The name cryptogam combines the modern words cryptic (hidden) and gamete (reproduction). Cryptogams are a group of plants and seaweeds which, unlike “modern” plants, produce neither flowers nor seeds. Rather, reproduction is a hidden, invisible affair whereby free-swimming sperms move from plant to plant to achieve fertilisation. This is not unlike the reproduction of the ancestors of plants, green algae, which lived millions of years ago in the seas and oceans. Indeed, cryptogams such as mosses and ferns can only reproduce in damp areas. The “primitive” lifestyle of cryptogams connects us directly with a far past, some 500 million years ago, when plants first colonised land. The emergence of the first plants on land, cryptogam mosses, had massive repercussions: changing a dusty, grey-brown world in a new, green world which, much, much later saw the appearance of amazing creatures such as dinosaurs (some 250 million years ago) and ultimately humans (some 300.000 years ago).
Glenkeen garden, the Crespo Foundation base in the far west of County Cork, is located on the shore of Roaringwater Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The lush gardens are wet (more than one meter rain per year), and cryptogams thrive, ranging from tiny, native liverworts to massive Australian tree-ferns. These cryptogams freely colonise bare rocks, walls, roofs, tree trunks, and any other object, just as their ancestors would have done some 500 million years ago. Many cryptogams are small, but en masse, and over thousands of years they have formed one of the most characteristic of Irish landscapes, the Irish peat-land bog. Incidentally, this links this historic group of humble plants to some of the biggest challenges facing planet Earth in the 21st century: climate change. Peat bogs store enormous amounts of carbon and are a vital component of a healthy planet Earth. Thus, cryptogams link a far past to a healthy future, and their survival of extreme events such as mass extinctions, ice ages, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, is staggering. This multi-dimensional perspective of cryptogams is on the one hand awe inspiring, but on the other hand largely overlooked by scientists and artists alike (in that sense, the term “crypto” appears to have multiple dimensions).
Stepping into this void is Markus Huemer, who as part of the Glenkeen Garden Residencies, ArtNature/NatureArt, worked for several months in the gardens. He was inspired by the many cryptogams, ranging from seaweeds washed ashore at the bottom of the garden, to mosses and ferns deeper in the garden, including the epiphytic growth of algae and mosses on tree trunks. Inspiration by cryptogams is inspiration by an invisible world, a world without the distraction, and without being masked by, colourful petals and sensual fragrances, but rather a quieter, older world going back to the essence of what is life, and the core of the relationships between life, environment and ourselves. Markus has effectively captured these relationships in his paintings through the use of a limited range of colours, bold lines, and placing plant parts in a broader environment. Remarkably, Markus picked up on the analogies between cryptogams and cryptocurrencies; their shared (in)visibility. While one can seriously question whether cryptocurrencies will last as long as cryptogams, the shared emphasis on the “hidden”, in a society that preaches openness and transparency remains an inspirational, puzzling, as well as possibly a troubling perspective.
prof. Marcel Jansen
In his artistic practice, Huemer explores the peculiarities of the perception of artistic reality through a dynamic exchange of experiences in digital, interactive and traditional media. Huemer works both in the media of paintings and drawings, as well as in interactive environmental installations and computer animation, focusing on the process itself rather than on the representation of reality, which in both cases derives from artificial reality – artistic vision or computer generated images.
The exhibition presents a series of paintings and drawings created during 2020 and 2021 in which Huemer deals with the motif of cryptograms – plants that reproduce by spores, such as lichens, mosses, ferns, seaweed, fungi, viruses, bacteria… As the earliest forms of life on our planet, they are the only life forms that have not left the evolutionary process to this day, defying any climate change. Cryptograms represent encrypted messages that require deciphering, and the process of evolution of microorganisms can be seen as a natural form of deciphering genetic information. Microorganisms, like bacteria and viruses, evolve through mutation and selection, which is analogous to the process of solving cryptograms where solutions are sought through trial and error. Evolution is like an algorithm that optimizes genetic information for survival, while cryptanalysis uses algorithms to discover hidden messages. Learning from nature, advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence make it possible to analyze and break complex codes. Algorithms analyze large amounts of data to recognize patterns in encrypted messages and select the most likely solutions based on past experiences and patterns. In evolution, natural selection favors microorganisms with beneficial mutations. Cryptograms are a kind of basic environment on our planet from which new, different life can always arise. The witty titles of the works contribute to the qualitative experience of the paintings, while the name of the exhibition underlines the fact that there are species with more perfect innate mechanisms of survival than those possessed by the human species. This thinking can be linked to challenging the dominant role that man has in shaping the planet. With the development of technologies, the anthropocentric view of the world is paradoxically changing towards a holistic one, recognizing the interdependence of all ecosystems. Algorithms and artificial intelligence optimize production processes and resource consumption. This transformation is essential to achieving a sustainable future and preserving the planet, the only living space we have at our disposal and which we are obliged to share with others.
Ksenija Marinkovic
