SPACE December2025 (No. 697)
Exhibition view of ‘Befriending the Mountains’. ©Fondation d'entreprise Hermès / Photo by Sangtae Kim
Installation view of Befriending the Mountains (2025), Fish Trying to Kiss the Moon (2025), Lightning Garden (2025). ©Fondation d'entreprise Hermès / Photo by Sangtae Kim
Atelier Hermès will present ‘Befriending the Mountains’, a solo exhibition by Barcelona-born artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, opening on Nov. 28. His first solo exhibition in Korea, it features a wide range of media, including drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Across these diverse media, he proposes a delicate visual language that explores the complex relationship between nature and human culture.
For Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, nature is neither an objectified entity nor merely a backdrop, but rather an integral part of our world. This perspective has been shaped by his lifelong experiences and intellectual engagement with biology and anthropology. From an early age, he showed a deep interest in flora and fauna. Since the mid-2000s, he spent an extended period of time in Brazil, where he discovered a profound resonance with the natural environments and indigenous philosophies of Rio de Janeiro and the Amazon. In particular, the ecological complexity and biodiversity of the Mata Atlântica and the Amazon rainforest, both under the threat of extinction, have played a pivotal role in forming his artistic and intellectual foundations.
In Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s work, he perceives the world through the entanglement and interdependence of beings within an ecosystem, while simultaneously deconstructing the hierarchies between nature and humans, and between the living and the non-living. This perspective and attitude are closely linked to philosophical thought that seeks to overcome the dualisms of modernity. Particularly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh (chair), which articulates the intertwining (entrelacs) of sensation and the world, and Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, which views both humans and nonhumans as actants engaged in mutual interaction, form key theoretical frameworks for the artist. He believes these concepts are embedded within the forest.
This exhibition is designed to encourage sensory immersion through its spatial layouts. For example, a misaligned diagonal partition slows the viewer’s spatial perception. As a result, visitors lose their sense of direction, and the entire exhibition unfolds like a maze, hovering between order and chaos. One of the notable works in this journey of disorientation is Befriending the Mountains (2025), which shares its title with the exhibition. As part of one of the artist’s signature series, the metal curtain is fabricated from ready-made components manufactured by Kriskadecor. Multiple layers of the curtain, installed along the passageways, both permit and obstruct movement, creating a destabilsing effect whereby it is unclear whether one can pass through. When visitors pass through the curtain, its loosely hanging metallic strands transform from a physical barrier into a flowing threshold. In this process, the two-dimensional object is rebuilt into a three-dimensional environment constructed through sensory contact. The metallic friction sounds, and delicate textures intervene in the exhibition’s acoustics and rhythm, prompting visitors to realise that they are entering the space through physical engagement. This site-specific installation was designed based on the artist’s observations in Korea. While it is unclear what specifically inspired the work, the exhibition’s title, ‘Befriending the Mountains’, suggests to visitors that they are entering the realm of nature. The golden colour of the curtains evokes sunlight or the glow of sunset, functioning as a visual device that recalls physical contact with nature.
Lightning Stone (2025), scattered throughout the exhibition space, presents stone artworks that appear to have been weathered by lightning strikes, generated from thin filaments. Each uniquely shaped object is given a nickname such as ‘Mountain’, ‘Elephant’, ‘Lion’, or ‘Dragon’. These forms do not serve as symbols with specific meanings, but rather as they are sculptural suggest an animistic worldview, encompassing the diverse entities of the universe; the living and the non-living, natural phenomena and human-made artifacts. Inspired by the phenomenon of the echo and the ritornello structure found in Baroque music, the artist arranges these stone forms to recur throughout the exhibition, each time with subtle variations and transformations, gently stimulating the viewer’s senses.
In the latter part of the exhibition, Lightning Garden (2025), an outdoor installation, comes into view. Situated in the central courtyard, this pine garden consists of two elements; two Korean pine trees planted atop a mound covered with black volcanic rock and a lightning mechanism is activated above them. The surreal landscape, contrasting sharply with the surrounding artificial materials, marks the climax of the exhibition’s sensory composition. It evokes the boundlessness of nature, where present and past, urban and cosmic spaces converge. The poetic video work Fish Trying to Kiss the Moon (2025) which was filmed at Wolji Pond in Gyeongju, captures the moment when the moon’s reflection on the water meets with the fish swimming below. This encounter between two unreachable entities evokes a universe composed of four elemental forces; earth, water, fire, and wind alongside the Lightning Garden, concluding this exhibition’s sensorial entanglements.
This exhibition demonstrates that art and nature can form relationships not only through representation, but through sensory and spatial encounters. It offers visitors a chance to perceive nature anew and to reconfigure their relationship with it. The exhibition will be open until Mar. 8 2026.
