Fernando Bryce is driven by an archaeological interest. The artist, who was born in Lima, Peru, in 1965 and has lived in Berlin since the late ’80s, has amassed an archive of drawing series—some comprising nearly five hundred pieces, all on standard-format paper—that include among their subjects individual historical figures as well as complex phenomena such as the Spanish Civil War, the Cuban revolution, and general political developments in South America after World War II. In them, Bryce pursues the strategy Walter Benjamin ascribed to the chronicler in his “Theses on the Philosophy of

Blame it on Google Earth: The view from above is becoming a dominant perspective in aesthetics. As linear perspective spread with the Renaissance, the satellite view rose with our Global Village; this godlike yet profane vision, ushered in with the televised space launches of the ’60s, has intensified alongside globalization. Some artists are attempting to take political questions to the open skies in a way reminiscent of the generation that found its problems and answers in the media landscape. We may soon look at all issues—environmental protection, urban planning, poverty, and even race—with