SPIEGEL ONLINE : Menacing crackling can currently be heard in the Frankfurter Kunsthalle Schirn. In a room with red light and fog you can hear melting ice from Greenland, which the Danish artist Jacob Kirkegaard has recorded under and over water. Is that a warning?

Esther Schlicht : You can see it that way, at least the acoustic impression of the changing nature is very alarming. But the exhibition "Wilderness" is not about nature conservation, even if it ends with it. We've been wondering what makes art so appealing to wildlife ideas. Original nature does not exist anymore today - every corner of this earth is changed by human influence.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: At least the jungle of Thomas Struth seems quite untouched?

Simple : These pictures are more projections, reflect our desires and fantasies. This is already clear from the fact that Thomas Struth calls his Brazil recording "Paradise 21". Some other artists themselves were never in the nature that they represented. Their visions, however, have shaped the cultural image in our heads

SPIEGEL ONLINE : You mean a back-to-nature romance?

Simple : Yes, for example. It's been around for a long time. Our exhibition starts with a jungle painting by Henri Rousseau, a pure fantasy world. Opposite, an iconic image of Briton Rivière hangs with a polar bear looking towards the sunset on a glacier. These are wilderness romantic ideas that still affect our relationship to nature today.

SPIEGEL ONLINE : However, the so-called romantic view of exoticism is also characterized by European arrogance, by racism and sexism of the time. How did you deal with it in the exhibition?

Simple : By change of perspective. The view of colonialism is not the only artistic approach, although the term "wilderness" naturally comes from Western civilization. The artist Ana Mendieta, for example, symbolically sought in her actions to give nature back her own body instead of annexing nature. With her, wilderness is not something that should be mastered or overcome.

SPIEGEL ONLINE : And how real are the depictions of wilderness today?

Simple : It is like earlier projections of the artists, some of which are true optical illusions. Gerhard Richter's "Tiger" representation comes from a press photo, and the artist Julian Charrière dusted rubble mounds in Berlin with icing sugar or extinguishing foam and photographed magical fake alpine pictures. But wilderness can also simply symbolize the creative process. Or artists design images of a future wilderness after the end of civilization.

SPIEGEL ONLINE : Wilderness as utopia - does nature have a future as a concept?

Simple : another form of nature perhaps, as in Hicham Berrada. In laboratories he creates new wild structures through chemical processes that develop independently. It is an optimistic vision of nature-like, artificial processes that humans do not control.

Exhibition: Wilderness, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, until 3 February 2019