Both artists act as modern-day alchemists, manipulating light, chemistry and material to transmute landscape into more than image,  into sensation, atmosphere, and emotion.

Here, the landscape becomes a site of transformation, both physical and poetic. Through processes that are as tactile as they are visual, Landscape and Alchemy reveals the photographic medium as a vessel for both material experimentation and spiritual inquiry. This is a journey through spaces not merely seen, but felt, remembered, and remade.

Liebmann draws on memory and archival photographic material to explore the mutable nature of time and recollection.  Her ”etchings of time” reflect her belief that memory is fluid and ever-changing. Her works often present fleeting glimpses of cityscapes and landscapes, imbued with a strong sense of presence of the observer, both witnessing and remembering.

“During our journeys through life, to our alleged goal, it is easy to become detached from our immediate environment. It becomes hard to see anything beyond what we have already learned to see, and most of what we see, when we see, is quick and remote; we are lost in thought. I try to capture these traces of moments, of life happening around us, frozen in one image.” — Katja Liebmann

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For Nikolova, nature is both subject and collaborator. Her work explores the tension between control and surrender, simplicity and complexity, light and shadow. Using elemental shapes in her photogram silhouettes, she embraces variables – temperature, humidity, exposure time – conditions that materially shape the final image. The resulting abstract landscapes are fragile, meditative, and timeless, capturing, in her words, “the still point of the turning world” (T.S. Eliot).

“I believe that we need to create new templates for how we relate to ourselves, to one another, to the living planet.” – Nadezda Nikolova

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“My work becomes a portal to a place outside of space and time… the work aims to evoke mystery and awe, inviting contemplation and stillness, so that on some level, it speaks to beauty and hope.” – Nadezda Nikolova.

Though distinct in method and mood, both artists are quiet observers of the world, engaged in existential explorations of identity and presence, guided by intuition. Nikolova’s interest in Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality—the capacity for new beginnings—echoes through her work, while Liebmann explores life as a cyclical journey with neither beginning nor end.

Their works resist literal transcription. Instead, they invite the viewer to feel, to experience. Nikolova’s abstract landscapes offer a spiritual refuge, while Liebmann’s remind us of the impermanence of our journey and the quiet beauty of the unseen.

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