On his travels, Munich-based photo artist Jan Schünke repeatedly encounters moments in urban environments that can easily be overlooked. In the picture cycle DESIGNATED LIFE, individual situations are portrayed in which trees, detached from their natural environment, seem to exist in contradiction to an inhospitable cityscape. With these portraits, Jan Schünke observes collective agreements across city boundaries and countries with which living space and the right to exist in the common urban space are agreed upon for plant individuals.

These repetitions of the handling of living vegetation make ideological free spaces in the modern city visible - these places refer to a value space outside our economically driven world of action.

But why are these trees now standing there - apparently for no reason - do the collected motifs leave much room for speculation? It would be obvious for an explanation to interpret a mythological level of meaning of tree beings that runs through culture and religious history. But although in all religions trees are mystified by people as mediators of values, a ritual or religious practice is not primarily recognizable in the pictorial plane.

Or leads us on an intuitive level - we experience trees as connected with the forces that determine the course of the living world. Do we intuitively feel this liveliness of tree creatures when human and non-human beings meet, which not only generates oxygen as the basis of life, but rather "does" something with us?

Untouched by all these considerations, the green protagonists are apparently neutral towards their surroundings. Can it be that we still experience something like knowledge in the emotional environment of these pictorial spaces?

It is the pictorial contextualization of organic life and a mineral-hard urban environment that provides room for interpretation. By juxtaposing naturalness and artificiality, Jan Schünke does not explain this dialectic as its content, but rather triggers a personal interpretation of the viewer.

In fact, this moment seems to be a clue that explains our relationship to these beings. Do we see dystopian or hopeful allegories of life in the picture series? Like a mirror, the series of pictures throws us back to ourselves on this question. While the trees are simple - for us they become a mirror of our own individual reference position, which may change - completely individual, as personal.

Klaus K. Loenhart, München, März 2018