An immersive experience
into Hybrid Nature

Ever More, a meditative immersion in the heart of the urban space at the MMFA

By Andrew Burlone

October 9, 2025

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) presents the world premiere of Ever More, an immersive video work by Kurt Hentschläger, a significant figure in contemporary digital art.

From dusk until 11 pm. each evening through April 5, 2026, the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion’s façade will display this new work, which explores the boundaries between reality and technological mediation. The piece invites reflection on our relationship with nature in the Anthropocene era.

Kurt Hentschläger’s work sits at the intersection of the surreal and the sensory

Kurt Hentschläger • Photo Martin Steffen

Kurt Hentschläger, an Austrian artist based in New York, has established himself over the years as a key figure in immersive art. As a founding member of the duo GRANULAR≈SYNTHESIS, active from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, he developed a unique artistic universe that combines visual, sound, digital, and performative arts within installations that intensely engage the viewer’s sensory perception. His work is often characterized by striking pictorial power and a multisensory experience that invites full immersion, blurring the boundaries between what is real and artificial. Hentschläger’s artistic approach is grounded in a deep understanding of aesthetic, psychological, and sensory effects, frequently linked to the political and environmental issues of our time.

A Work That Questions Nature in a Hybrid World

Ever More, the MMFA’s latest creation, is part of a series by Kurt Hentschläger that addresses the aesthetic and psychological effects of the Anthropocene era. The work explores a phenomenon that goes beyond purely artistic concerns: the transformation of nature under the combined influence of human intervention and technological advances.

For this piece, Hentschläger drew on original video recordings of wildflowers and plants from the Michigan prairies. These images, appearing completely natural, are then altered using visual effects, lighting, and 3D modelling algorithms. The result is an organic, shifting, hybrid landscape that oscillates between the real and the synthetic. The vegetation appears transformed, both natural and artificial, as if nature itself had become a work of art shaped by our digital gaze.

‘Ever More is not just a visual work; it is a meditative, silent experience inviting the viewer on an inward journey.’

This piece highlights that the hybrid nature—both tangible and artificial—tends to obscure, at least on the surface, the darker reality of the accelerated degradation of natural habitats. The false symbiosis offered by this synthetic nature acts as a diversion, a way to mask the relentless and often destructive exploitation of our environment.

A reflection on the progressive disappearance of nature

The message of Ever More is both powerful and urgent. Through the staging of organic emergences and partly digital impressionistic landscapes, Hentschläger questions our relationship with nature, which we no longer perceive directly but only through a mediated, technological lens.

In an era where the majority of the world’s population lives in urban environments and direct contact with the living world is increasingly rare, this work becomes a mirror of our daily realities. It particularly illustrates the trend toward creating an “augmented” nature—one that, while seeming to exalt the physical world, conceals the critical state of our ecosystems, victims of human exploitation.

This creation also questions the boundary between perception and reality. The constantly shifting hybrid nature resembles a living painting, a landscape in perpetual change, yet it remains an illusion—a distraction from the real disappearance of natural habitats. It invites a deep reflection on the need to preserve what remains before the line between reality and virtuosity becomes an impassable barrier.

A Contemplative and Engaged Experience

Ever More is not just a visual work; it is a meditative, quiet experience inviting the viewer on an inward journey. The outdoor projection on the façade of one of Montreal’s most emblematic sites creates a convergence between urban space and virtual nature, offering a moment of pause amid daily bustle—a chance to reflect on the fragility of the natural world in the face of human intervention.

‘Hentschläger challenges our relationship with nature, which we no longer perceive directly but only through a mediated technological lens.’

The MMFA is also hosting a conversation with the artist on December 3 at the Maxwell-Cummings Auditorium. This dialogue will be an opportunity to deepen the understanding of Hentschläger’s artistic approach, his environmental and artistic concerns, and how Ever More fits within a series of works that invite critical contemplation.

An engaged work for a conscious future

This installation is part of an effort to raise awareness about the need to rethink our relationship with nature and the environment, emphasizing the urgency to act against global degradation. The projection of Ever More offers a sensory and intellectual experience, reminding us that our future depends on our ability to recognize and respect the fragile harmony of life.

By presenting this work, the MMFA continues to affirm its role as a platform for engaged and innovative contemporary art. Through Ever More, Kurt Hentschläger offers a work that transcends art to become an actual call to consciousness, inviting us to look beyond the images presented and better understand the reality of our planet.

Images by Julie Ciot, courtesy of the MMFA, unless indicated

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