The Hermit (2025) replaces the human figure from the painting The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) with a microscope. Microscopes are used to observe and analyse, which helps transform the work from the solitude of existentialism to a form of technological estrangement. This, therefore, creates a reflection of solitude and vulnerability within the context of technology. The Romanticist landscape within the work is set upon this microscope, which, which looks like it is displaced in this scene. The machine that analyses and examines has now become magnified by this collage and the viewer as they look upon it.
The collage parts seem slightly torn, which makes this scene feel like it’s getting broken apart and repaired. This technique seems to create a more sutured work, which implies that the scene is one of care and has some humanity. Yet the sterility and perfection of the microscope against this human creation give the work a form of tension between perfect and imperfect: sterile and organic. The microscope is of more interest as it is not a contemporary machine but a vintage medical device. The dated print colour of the microscope blends very well into the more painterly background of the work, which turns it into a part of the scene and mountain.
The work reinterprets Friedrich’s solitude with this device; in Friedrich’s work, the figure is on top of the precipice, which takes the viewer to reflect and meditate upon nature’s immensity and the limits of humanity. The usage of the microscope in Hunter’s work implies the same idea as the role exchanged with technology in how it builds and expands our understanding of this world.
Overall, The Hermit (2025) questions our understanding of solitude and its nature; the microscope becomes solitude as it searches for the meaning of this world. The work takes the Romanticist ideas and dips them into a more contemporary lens, challenging how we see technology.