Prospecting Ocean Opening

A solo exhibition featuring new work by Armin Linke on view at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery February 27 – June 27, 2025. Opening Reception February 27, 6:30 PM

Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) is pleased to present Prospecting Ocean by Armin Linke, a multimedia artistic research project that investigates the technocratic entanglement of industry, science, politics, and economics at the frontiers of ocean exploration. The exhibition features Linke’s archival research, photography, and films, including behind-the-scenes footage at leading oceanographic research institutions and at sea. It is Linke’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. in over 20 years.

Armin Linke (b. 1966, Milan) is an internationally renowned artist based in Berlin. Through photography and filmmaking, Linke reveals how the environment is transformed by technologies, infrastructures, systems of knowledge, and political power. His expansive body of work on the Anthropocene penetrates complex institutional networks, offering rare glimpses of the processes—from bureaucratic decision-making to logistics, to mechanized operations and manual labor—that cumulatively generate terrestrial and ecological effects at a scale that is often beyond perception.

In Prospecting Ocean, Linke scrutinizes the administration of the oceans and exposes the simultaneous fascination with and alienation of modern technologies that map, visualize, and exploit resources in the ocean. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the title film which gives the exhibition its name, Prospecting Ocean, a cinematic journey that traverses United Nations assemblies, international law conferences, marine research centers, deep sea mining companies, gatherings of decision-makers that are usually closed to the public, as well as activist meetings in Papua New Guinea. Through a series of photographs, a selection of critical texts and key documents, and filmed interviews with marine biologists, geologists, policymakers, legal experts, and activists, Linke further grapples with the tensions between the ecological protection and exploitation of our oceans. Together, the materials invite viewers to consider the implications of oceanic excavations and resource extraction for both the environment and local economies and cultures.

Prospecting Ocean was first presented in 2018 at CNR-ISMAR–Istituto di Scienze Marine in Venice, and was commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy, whose fellowship program The Current allowed Linke to start the research on the project. For his exhibition at the Ross Gallery, GSAPP has invited Linke to develop a new chapter of his project that is based on his research at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This chapter expands his project by introducing new material on seafloor mapping, autonomous underwater vehicles, and emerging policies on biodiversity.

The Ross Gallery presentation of Prospecting Ocean is co-curated by Irene Sunwoo, John H. Bryan Chair and Curator, Architecture and Design at Art Institute of Chicago and Stefanie Hessler, Director of Swiss Institute, New York. The exhibition design for the Ross Gallery presentation of Prospecting Ocean is by the Office for Political Innovation. Its realization marks the reopening of the gallery under the direction of Bart-Jan Polman, GSAPP Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery.

The exhibition is a continuation of the exhibition Prospecting Ocean, curated by Stefanie Hessler for TBA21–Academy at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Venice, Italy (2018), commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. A book on the project (Prospecting Ocean, 2019) by Hessler, which includes a visual essay by Linke, was published by MIT Press and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary.

The exhibition was originally scheduled to open in March 2020 and was postponed due to the pandemic. Presented in its original scope, Prospecting Ocean remains urgent and timely.

About Armin Linke For over 20 years, Armin Linke has explored the question of how humanity uses technologies and knowledge in order to transform the surface of the earth and adapt it to its needs. His films and photographs document human-made changes on land, at sea, and throughout the entire biosphere. Former MIT Visual Arts Program Cambridge research affiliate, guest professor at the IUAV Arts and Design University in Venice, professor of photography at the Karlsruhe University for Arts and Design (HfG), artist in residence at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut (KHI), and guest artist at the CERN Geneva, Linke is currently a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (AdBK) and a guest professor at ISIA Urbino. In 2004, Linke’s installation Alpi on the contemporary Alpine landscape won a special prize for the best work in the section “Episodes” at the Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2019, with Image Capital, Linke gained the Kubus.Sparda Art Prize (DE). His works have been exhibited internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include: Instruments of Vision, Igrexa da Universidade, Santiago de Compostela, 2024; Image Capital (with Estelle Blaschke), Centre Pompidou, Paris, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Eschborn/Frankfurt, MAST, Bologna, and Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2022-2023; Earth Indices. Processing the Anthropocene (with Giulia Bruno), HKW, Berlin, 2022; Blind Sensorium, Matadero, Madrid and Museo Archeologico Nazionale Domenico Ridola, Matera, 2019-2021.

Credits: Co-curated by Irene Sunwoo, John H. Bryan Chair and Curator, Architecture and Design at Art Institute of Chicago and Stefanie Hessler, Director of the Swiss Institute, in New York Organized by Columbia GSAPP

GSAPP: Bart-Jan Polman, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery; Jean Im, Assistant Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs; Irene Sunwoo (former Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery), Paula Vilaplana de Miguel (former Assistant Director of Exhibitions); Fernanda Carlovich (MSCCCP ‘20), Thomas Chiu (M.Arch ‘21), Emma MacDonald (MSCCCP ‘20), Callum McGregor Gauthier (MSCCCP ‘25), Lucy Navarro (M.Arch ‘20), Nika Teper (M.Arch ‘20) Exhibition design: Office for Political Innovation Graphic design: Willis Kingery

The project has been realized in collaboration with Giulia Bruno (camera, editing), Stefanie Hessler (curator), Giuseppe Ielasi (sound, editing), Renato Rinaldi (sound), and Kati Simon (project management).

Studio Armin Linke Project Assistance Nicholas Boncardo De Leo, Elena Capra, Laura Fiorio, Paola Spagnuolo, Valentina Galossi, Ferial Nadja Karrasch, Sarah Poppel, Martina Pozzan, Elisa Scaramuzzino

Armin Linke is represented by Vistamare Milano|Pescara.

Media inquiries: communications@arch.columbia.edu.