What does the parallel reality look like where we have chosen instead to live in harmony with nature’s striving for equilibrium

– a state that in our time appears radically absent?

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Joakim Eneroth Sterner presents co-creation as a possible path out of the climate crisis. When the overwhelming flow of climate facts in the media risks paralyzing us into resignation, we need hope; an uplifting vision that reminds us that we can still attempt to co-create our way out of the crisis. Such a hopeful vision materializes in the exhibition Equilibrium, where Joakim Eneroth Sterner opens a luminous portal into a parallel world where cosmic order is not a metaphor but a manifested reality. Here, we encounter the organic life force in full strength, activated in an ecological and metaphysical state of balance and material equivalence.

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In this parallel reality, a state of Parhelia prevails – the optical phenomenon where multiple suns fill the atmosphere through the refraction of light in airborne ice crystals. This recurring solar mirror within the artworks generates an overflow of light and functions as an aesthetic and cosmological code for a world in abundance – not through consumption, but through light, energy, and resonance.

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It is from this phenomenon that the sun-shaped artworks Pharhelia – Alkaline Sun No. 1–12 have emerged. Eneroth Sterner stages here a poetic materiality, where the chemical properties of the painting medium are activated as carriers of meaning.    

In the acrylic paint in these paintings, the artist has integrated small amounts of various everyday cleaning agents – liquid soap, dishwashing detergent, and laundry detergent – which then interact with lime paint in a controlled alkaline chemical process. This process-based aesthetic turns the work into a site of transformation rather than representation.

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The alkaline chemical neutralization process occurring in the paintings corresponds with actual ecological restoration methods, such as liming acidified lakes to raise the pH level. The alkaline restoration process created in nature is a way of healing lakes from the acid effects of phosphates coming from cleaning agents, soaps and detergents. With Alkaline Sun, Eneroth Sterner both thematizes the effects of consumer society and underscores our potential capacity for ecological healing.

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The exhibition visualizes an alternative reality prototype through artworks that not only present visual fragments of a reality but also stage other ways of living and perceiving the world. Equilibrium reveals a parallel world where a cosmic order flows between the planetary and the particular, from astronomical views down to microbiological perspectives.

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The turquoise hues in the wall sculptures Organic Transition serve as a visual reference to another form of restorative ecological intervention achieved through aluminum precipitation. This process tints the surface of lake water turquoise-blue as aluminum is introduced into its depths to bind phosphorus in the bottom sediments, counteracting eutrophication. The sublime references to healing and restoration is a recurring theme throughout the exhibition.

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The artworks is a climatic and associative allusion of the philosophical world in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel Always Coming Home, where the Kesh people lives in total ecological coexistence. Equilibrium also activates what philosopher Donna Haraway calls the ability to generate meaningful future visions through artistic imagination. The works in the exhibition are thus not a retreat from reality but an attempt to shift perception, create emotional proximity to the sublime, and offer the viewer a different approach to the conditions of our time. It is a reminder that our ability to envision and adopt new perspectives is a crucial part of our collective capacity to co-create a shared future.

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​Joakim Eneroth is an internationally established artist whose artworks are represented in major museums such as Tate Modern in London, Brooklyn Museum in New York, MEP in Paris, Dallas Museum of Art, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Deichtorhallen – House of Photography in Hamburg, Art Foundation Mallorca, Musée des Beaux-Arts, The Franks-Suss Collection, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, among others. His art books have been published by international publishers such as Steidl in Germany and PowerHouse Books in New York.

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