GALLERY X EXHIBITIONS

Black Sun

Søren Solkær

Renowned for his striking portraits of cultural icons, Danish photographer Søren Solkær turns his lens to the natural world in Black Sun, capturing one of nature’s most mesmerising spectacles—the murmuration of starlings. In these breathtaking images, thousands of birds move as one, shifting and reshaping the sky in a hypnotic display of fluid motion, instinct, and unity.

Over six years, Solkær followed the common starling (Sturnus vulgaris) migration across Europe, tracing their path from the Wadden Sea in Denmark, England, and Ireland to the skies of Sardinia, Rome, and Catalonia. Inspired by classical landscape painting, Japanese woodblock prints, and the expressive strokes of calligraphy, his work transforms these fleeting formations into living works of art. The birds appear like ink brushed against the sky—at times forming delicate, harmonious patterns and at others bursting into chaotic, dramatic movement.

Through Black Sun, Solkær explores the delicate balance between order and chaos, individuality and collectivity. Each murmuration is a mathematical abstraction and an ephemeral ballet of life and survival. The exhibition invites viewers to witness nature’s artistic force, where movement, light, and shadow converge in a symphony of form and rhythm, fleeting yet unforgettable.

Black Sun - Color

The first section of Black Sun presents 17 large-scale colour images, capturing the starling murmurations in all their vivid intensity. These photographs showcase the dynamic interplay of light, sky, and movement, transforming the birds into fluid, ever-changing forms that dissolve into their surroundings.

Søren Solkær’s use of colour enhances the atmospheric drama of each scene. The shifting hues of dusk and dawn bathe the flocks in golden light, deep blues, and fiery oranges, creating a striking contrast between the birds and the sky. These images reveal the ephemeral beauty of the murmuration—where thousands of individual starlings become a single, living organism, adapting in unison to unseen forces.

Black Sun - Monochromatic Murmurations

The second section of Black Sun features 13 monochromatic images, rendered in soft beige tones that strip the murmuration down to its purest form—shape, texture, and movement. By removing the distraction of colour, Søren Solkær focuses on the stark contrast between the birds and the sky, emphasizing the fluid, calligraphic quality of their formations.

These images possess a timeless, almost ethereal quality, evoking the aesthetics of traditional ink drawings or ancient scroll paintings. The starling murmurations appear as delicate brushstrokes, shifting between order and chaos as they carve ephemeral patterns across the vast sky. Some images feel meditative, their forms floating gently, while others capture the explosive tension of a flock reacting to an unseen threat, their dark masses twisting and dispersing like smoke in the wind.