With works by SERGE KLYMKO

Exhibition curated by Serge Klymko (Fellow Ukraine Encounters 2024) and Sarah Jonas (Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz)

​How can we think planetary in the shadow of war? How to confront the ontological power of the vertical? How to preserve a human dimension of the landscape? Vertical Horizon seeks critical reflections on these themes, inviting explorations of the planetary dimensions of war, migration geographies, military technologies, black earth poetics and new chtonic mythology. Through the fieldwork, artistic reflection and cross-disciplinary approaches, it asks how should we visualize and comprehend the earth’s scars, the scars that are shared with a human being.

The exhibition focuses on the idea of land and landscape as a poetic and political entity and traces its development as the visual basis of territorial identity—from the marking of borders and property to the technologically advanced, extractivist exploration of the Earth’s layers by national and transnational power actors. The focus is on the increasing shift of geopolitical conflicts on the earth’s surface toward a vertical perspective—into geological depths and atmospheric heights, where resources are controlled and territories monitored. The exhibition aims to reclaim the Earth’s agency through planetary thinking, artistic research, and collective imagination, enabling alternative perspectives beyond hegemonic logics of violence.

The Kyiv Biennial, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2025, is an international project that interweaves artistic, political, and social issues. Against the backdrop of ongoing wars, colonial continuities, and global inequalities, the Biennial offers a space for reflection, solidarity, and critical engagement.

Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz
Doktor-Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1
4020 Linz / Österreich

The exhibition is a collaboration between Lentos, the Kyiv Biennial, and tranzit​.at. Funded by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Art, Culture, Media and Sport, ERSTE Foundation, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program with funds from the German Federal Foreign Office (AA) and RIBBON International.