Jochen Proehl brings his relationship with the earth under the sea in the Pontos exhibition. In this series and previous works, we should take Proehl's presenting only the material existence of space, and the absence of any living life form such as plants, animals, or humans in his landscapes into consideration within this context. These works may designate the beginning of time just as well as the end of it, meaning they embody all the temporalities.

In Greek Mythology, Pontos (Sea) is among the three children of the parthenogenic beginning of life, Gaia (Earth), along with Uranus (Sky) and Ourea (Mountains). Thus, life began with Earth and continued with the Sea. In this case, we can think of Proehl's art that transited from Gaia to Pontus travels along with the formation of the universe and records it metaphorically. 

Most of the photographs in the exhibition were taken with a camera obscura. Proehl uses a simple cardboard box with a pinhole instead of a lens and an analogue film inside. This simple camera obscura provides the source material for the image processing, in the course of which he also transforms the photographed views into underwater landscapes. The exhibition comprises 19, mostly large-format photographs. All are C-prints laminated on Alu-Dibond.

Pontos is Jochen Proehl's second exhibition at Millî Reasürans Art Gallery 18 years after his first exhibition in 2005 called The Landscape World of Jochen Proehl.

Jochen Proehl grew up in Istanbul in the 1970s. He later studied painting at the Universität der Künste Berlin (then HdK). Since 2010 he has been living and working in Istanbul again, where he has had lectureships at various universities, including Marmara University, Işık University and Okan University. Since 2013, he has been a faculty member at the Faculty of Communication at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul.

 Proehl, who works in equal parts with photography and painting, had many solo exhibitions in Germany and Türkiye and participated in group exhibitions in Europe.

 His recent exhibitions include Urban Anatomies and The Single Records: Aegean Memories, which opened at the C.A.M Gallery in Istanbul between 2020 and 2022. Most recently, he opened the exhibition All the Time in the World at the Museum Rosenhang in Weilburg, Germany.

 According to Jochen Proehl, the photographs of the Pontos series are not about specific scenes or moments. Rather, they are about pictorial spaces which long periods of time or even all the time in the world is condensed in, such as in a long-term exposure. As a result of the whole process, Proehl aims to create images of the world both before and after civilization.