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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In the paintings Parhelia - Alkaline Sun, Eneroth also stages a poetic materiality by symbolically mixing a small amount of acidified consumer products into the acrylic paint, such as shampoo, deodorant and mouthwash, together with a tiny amount of aluminium sulphate. The paintings are then immersed in lime paint, incorporating these materials into an controlled alkaline process that forms the second part of the title. This process neutralizes the traces of the consumer products, whereas the aluminium sulphate binds phosphates. These processes directly correspond to the actual ecological restoration methods of liming acidified lakes in nature to raise the pH level and the aluminium sulphate is used to counteract eutrophication. The alkaline restoration process created in nature is a way of healing lakes from acidification, and the aluminium treatment binds phosphorus in the bottom sediment to prevent the lake from producing the greenhouse gas methane. Methane is a gas that warms the atmosphere far more per molecule than CO₂. The artworks, in their materiality, underlines the importance of these processes by making them a part of the actual painting. The artworks bring together environmental problems and their potential solutions in a single symbolic material gesture, serving as a reminder of the need 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 also serve as a visual reference the restorative ecological intervention achieved through aluminum precipitation. This process tints the surface of lake water turquoise-blue as aluminum is introduced into its depths 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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