MOONARIJ UNVEILS NEW MOONJAR GLASS VASES | A TRIBUTE TO THE GLASSBLOWN SPHERE

May 15, 2025 (Berlin, Germany) – Berlin-based MOONARIJ launches the Moonjar collection, a new series of large-scale spherical glass vessels, introducing a bold new shape to the brand’s diverse designs. Renowned for its dedication to preserving centuries-old German glassmaking traditions while continuously reimagining form and pattern through a contemporary lens, the brand now pays homage to the sphere — the very first and most essential shape in the glassmaking process. Elevating the initial shape into the final form, MOONARIJ transforms the point of origin into its ultimate expression. This core form, capturing the artisan’s very first breath into the material, now takes center stage in the Moonjar series through a colorful collection of shimmering glass vases.

The name "Moonjar" refers to traditional Korean spherical porcelain vessels, made during the Joseon dynasty and cherished for their understated elegance and purity of form. Timeless and iconic, these objects have long served as symbols of cross-cultural inspiration, influencing artisans across eras and disciplines, a legacy now carried in MOONARIJ’s glass creations. Reinterpreting the spherical form through the brand’s contemporary design language, these vases balance transparency, reflection, and playful ornamentation, embodying a delicate sense of joy. With every piece, new compositions emerge, fluid, unpredictable and unrepeatable, each a unique interpretation of an imperfectly perfect form.

With the introduction of the Moonjars, MOONARIJ expands on a lineage of forms developed across its collections, from the ovoid silhouettes of the Oona and Zigzag series to the tall cylinders of Narij and the wide, voluminous profiles of the Large Buckets.

MOONARIJ was born from a deep passion for artisanally made vessels appealing to those who value innovation while cherishing the organic, handmade quality shaped by the care and expertise of master glass artists. Founded in 2022 by Johanna Wichelhaus, the Berlin-based brand fuses contemporary design sensibilities with traditional craftsmanship. Each piece is conceived in Berlin and brought to life through close collaboration with small, skilled workshops in Berlin and Dresden.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)

Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

Ena Alva | Account Executive | ena@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS:                                               

About MOONARIJ:

MOONARIJ is a Berlin-based, female-founded design brand focused on handcrafted vases. Captivated by the art of glass blowing, Johanna Wichelhaus teamed up with renowned glass artists in 2021 to develop first iterations of her sketches of striped bud vases. The designs evolved into the brand‘s first collections – the Oona, released in 2022, and the Narij, followed by the Large Bucket, Oona Baby and Zigzag collection. Voluminous in shape, iridescent in color and meticulously crafted, hand-blown and hand-sculpted Moonarij vases stand out as mesmerizing objects of beauty.

www.moonarij.com

Instagram: @moonarij_objects           

Image Credits:
1. Moonjar #5. Photography by Ivan Kravstov. Courtesy of MOONARIJ.
2. Moonjar #10. Photography by Ivan Kravstov. Courtesy of MOONARIJ.
3. Collection of MOONARIJ Vases. Photography by Ivan Kravstov. Courtesy of MOONARIJ.
4. Moonjar # 4 (white), Moonjar #6 (green/white), Moonjar # 7 (green/pink). Photography by Mina Aichhorn.
Courtesy of MOONARIJ.
5. Moonjar #9. Photography by Mina Aichhorn. Courtesy of MOONARIJ.
6. Moonjar #8. Photography by Mina Aichhorn. Courtesy of MOONARIJ.

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SOCIÉTÉ x Art Basel | Art Basel Unlimited | Art Basel Parcours

Preview Days: June 16 – 18, 2025
Public Days: June 19 – 22, 2025 

May 15, 2025 (Basel, Switzerland) – Berlin-based SOCIÉTÉ will participate in the 55th edition of Art Basel, from June 16 – 22, 2025, at Messe Basel. The gallery will present works by Jeanette Mundt, Trisha Baga, Petra Cortright, Conny Maier, Kaspar Müller, Tina Braegger, Timur Si-Qin, Wynnie Mynerva, Salim Green, Marianna Simnett, Bunny Rogers, Anh Trần, and Lu Yang at booth K8.

Petra Cortright, installation view of ‘sapphire cinnamon viper fairy’, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and SOCIÉTÉ, Berlin.

Petra Cortright at Art Basel Unlimited 

American artist Petra Cortright, will present a video installation titled sapphire cinnamon viper fairy at Art Basel’s 2025 Unlimited sector, at booth U67. The work takes the form of over two hundred webcam videos spanning fifty monitors. Looping videos across multiple screens, Cortright seeks to spatialize the fragmented, ephemeral nature of digital experiences. Each individual video, a tiny, self-contained world, converges into a larger, ever-evolving collage. Conceived in an era before smartphones and selfie culture, when the internet was, in the words of the artist, “a big empty space,” Cortright’s webcam works reflect an organic form of online existence: one driven by curiosity and the desire to simply be seen, even if just for a fleeting moment.

Marianna Simnett, ‘Interlude’, 2024. 7-minute single channel video with stereo sound and custom display. Resin, steel, television and speakers. 267 x 240 x 124 cm. Photography by Trevor Good, Courtesy of the artist and SOCIÉTÉ, Berlin.

Marianna Simnett at Art Basel Parcours

British-Croatian artist Marianna Simnett will present a video work titled Interlude in Art Basel’s 2025 Parcours sector, curated by Stefanie Hessler, in the Merian Hotel parking lot. The video loops within a sculpture of a concession stand inspired by those found at sporting events. Rendered in rich ochre, red, and gold tones, the work’s sculptural element appears illuminated from within by an otherworldly inner glow, giving it a mesmerizing, eerie quality that intensifies when the shutters lift to reveal a video of a solitary woman singing and preparing food—only to retreat behind the blinds once more. Interlude repositions the often-invisible figure of the vendor into a role of unexpected prominence. The video teems with tactile and abject imagery: sweating hotdogs glisten inside a food warmer, while ketchup and mayonnaise splurt and ooze, highlighting the visceral, almost grotesque materiality of the space and the tasks performed within it. These fluids echo the unease of containment and release, adding a layer of discomfort to the woman’s melancholic performance. The video exudes a dreamlike, almost Lynchian atmosphere, contrasting the gritty energy of sport with the melancholic presence of its protagonist. 

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MEDIA CONTACT

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com
Ena Alva | Account Manager | ena@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

Address
Messe Basel
Messeplatz 10 
4058 Basel
Switzerland

Opening Hours
Unlimited Sector Opening
Monday, June 16, 2025, 4pm - 8pm, First Choice
Monday, June 16, 2025, 6 pm - 8pm, Preview

VIP Days
Tuesday, June 17, 2025, 11am - 8pm, First Choice
Tuesday, June 17, 2025, 4pm - 8pm, First Choice & Preview
Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 11am - 8pm, First Choice, Preview, One Day VIP & Two Day VIP

Vernissage 
Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 4pm - 8pm

Public Days
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 11am - 7pm
Friday, June 20, 2025, 11am - 7pm
Saturday, June 21, 2025, 11am - 7pm
Sunday, June 22, 2025, 11am - 7pm

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CAROLINE BACHMANN’S SEASCAPE CYCLE IS THE LATEST ADDITION TO LE SIRENUSE’S SITE-SPECIFIC ART COLLECTION

May 12, 2025 (Positano, Italy) – Based at Le Sirenuse, the iconic family-run luxury hotel in the Italian coast town of Positano, the Artists at Le Sirenuse program is delighted to present its latest hotel-specific art project: a cycle of twenty seascapes by Swiss artist Caroline Bachmann inspired by the view of the Li Galli islands from the famed Amalfi Coast hotel over the course of an imaginary day, from midnight to midnight. 

Bachmann lives on the shores of Lake Geneva. A core element of her practice is to observe the lake at all hours, especially the liminal time between day and night, making sketches that, in her studio, become painted canvases that hold within them a multiplicity of views, memories and moments.

Antonio Sersale, co-owner of Le Sirenuse, fell in love with Bachmann’s work when he caught one of her solo shows at the Galerie Gregor Staiger in Zürich. He was struck by the convergence between her Lake Geneva waterscapes and a view he has admired since he was a child: that of the Mediterranean sea with the Li Galli islands on the horizon, as seen from the rooms, restaurant, bars and terraces of the hotel his family founded in 1951 in what until then had been their seaside villa. Siblings Paolo, Aldo, Anna and Franco Sersale named their new venture after these three islands, which were once known as Le Sirenuse, or ‘The Sirens’, due to their association with the mythological creatures who tempted passing sailors with their irresistible voices.

Invited to Positano in October 2023 by Antonio Sersale and Artists at Le Sirenuse curator Silka Rittson Thomas, Bachmann became equally fascinated by a view that changes from second to second under the influence of light, wind, waves and weather.

It was when she and Gregor Staiger stepped into Le Sirenuse’s Don’t Worry Music Bar, housed in what had been one of the original living rooms of the Sersale family villa, that the artist realised she had found a home, and a subject, for the proposed work. Up there, just below the traditional cross-vaulted ceiling, were twenty arched niches running continuously around the walls. This was the perfect location, Bachmann remarks, for a series of works that chart twenty moments in the course of one day and night but “are to be read in a direction of an infinitely rotating clock”.

Choosing as her ‘observation tower’ Room 65, which enjoys an unparalleled panorama of the ‘vertical town’ of Positano and the sea beyond with the Li Galli islands on the horizon, Bachmann began, as she always does, to make a series of pencil sketches of anything that struck her about that view – effects of the light, cloud formations, wave patterns, colour shifts and other details. It was only later that winter, after she returned to her Swiss studio, that the artist decided that the islands should be the focal point of the landscape cycle, and also the works would be a series of tondos – a circular format that was popular with Italian artists of the Renaissance.

It took Bachmann nine months to complete the twenty oil paintings, each of which measures 30cm in diameter and is enclosed within a painted amber frame based on a traditional Italian earth pigment, burnt sienna. The artist referenced the preparatory drawings made in Positano, she explains, “as a musician does a musical score… I don’t turn to the sketches to remind me of something but to recognise a density, an emotion, a force”. Bachmann adds that, for her, painting an island “is like painting a self-portrait, not only because the artist’s profession is a kind of island, but also because an identification takes place in the act of painting an island that allows you to bring it inside yourself and see it as a subject that is completely internal”. 

Entitled Le Sirenuse I–XX, 2025, the twenty works were installed in the Don’t Worry Music Bar on 8 April 2025, starting with midnight in the centre of the north wall, and proceeding clockwise around the arched niches through the course of a day and back to midnight. They encircle an existing work that hangs from the ceiling of the same room – Martin Creed’s neon installation Don’t Worry (2016). 

The dialogue between each work and its setting and the conversation between the individual works is a defining element of Artists at Le Sirenuse, a site-specific art programme launched in 2015. To date, it consists of twelve commissions, among them Nicolas Party’s vibrant re-imagining of Le Sirenuse’s swimming pool and Alex Israel’s trompe l’oeil mural on the stairway leading down to Aldo’s bar.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com 

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About Le Sirenuse

Le Sirenuse opened in 1951, in what until then had been the Sersale family’s summer house in Positano. Today, the 58-room Amalfi Coast resort is considered an Italian hospitality icon, though it still retains the intimate, cultured atmosphere of a private home. More than a mere hotel, it has become over the years a lifestyle reference point that brings into fertile dialogue the worlds of fashion, culture, gastronomy, mixology, and wellbeing, creating connections and crafting personal narratives. 

Scenic La Sponda restaurant, informally glamorous bar-bistrot Aldo’s, and the resort’s chic little Pool Bar showcase this southern Italian region’s authentic seasonal produce, while the Don’t Worry Music Bar is a true insiders’ speakeasy in tune with the rhythm of Positano nights.

Le Sirenuse also features a refreshingly contemporary Spa designed by architect Gae Aulenti, where a range of signature treatments are available, alongside a fitness area with two total-workout Megaformer machines. The resort is celebrated worldwide for its all-inclusive weekly activities, which include trekking on some of the Amalfi Coast’s spectacular mountain trails and more leisurely sunset cruises on the Sant’Antonio, the family’s traditional gozzo fishing boat.

Assembled over decades by art and antique collector Franco Sersale, the hotel’s elegant décor today enters into conversation with a growing site-specific contemporary art collection featuring talents of the calibre of Martin Creed and Nicolas Party, while the light-filled bedrooms are havens of dolce vita style. Now, as in the past, Le Sirenuse is a family affair. Third-generation Sersales, Aldo and Francesco, are increasingly involved in the day-to-day running of a hotel that their parents, Antonio and Carla, began to manage in 1991. Carla currently curates Emporio Sirenuse, the resort wear and lifestyle brand she founded in 2013, which takes inspiration from the deep-rooted Mediterranean culture of this charmed enclave south of Naples. For more information, please visit Sirenuse.it/en.

For more information, please visit www.sirenuse.it/en
Facebook | Instagram | @lesirenuse

About Caroline Bachmann

After studying at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Geneva, Caroline Bachmann went on to live and work in Barcelona and Rome before returning to Switzerland in 2003, where she is currently based. From 2007 to 2022, she is a Professor and Head of the painting and drawing department at the University of Art, HEAD in Geneva. Her and Swiss artist Stefan Banz collaborated between 2004 and 2014, a period during which they founded KMD – Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp | the Forestay Museum of Art, an exhibition and research space. Caroline Bachmann lives and works between Cully and Berlin.

Image Credits:
1 -2. Caroline Bachmann, Le Sirenuse I–XX,2024-5. Oil on board, 20 parts. 30 x 30 x 2.2 cm each BACH/P 71. Photography: Galerie Gregor Staiger © Caroline Bachmann.
3. Caroline Bachmann in the Don’t Worry Music Bar at Le Sirenuse. 2025. Photography by Roberto Salomone.
4. Le Sirenuse, Don't Worry Music Bar, 2025. Photography by Brechenmacher & Baumann.

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HEINZ MACK UNVEILS FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION AT ALMINE RECH IN NEW YORK | FROM ZERO UNTIL TODAY

On view: May 9 – June 15, 2025

May 6, 2025 (Germany) – In light of Heinz Mack's global representation by Almine Rech, the German artist unveils his first solo exhibition at the gallery, titled Heinz Mack | From ZERO until Today, on view from May 9 to June 14, 2025, at Almine Rech in Tribeca, New York. The exhibition will feature 22 works from the artist’s oeuvre, tracing key moments from his early ZERO period to the present day. A central figure and co-founder of the ZERO movement, Mack is celebrated for his innovative exploration of light, space, and color, with an oeuvre that ranges from paintings to monumental outdoor installations, leaving a lasting impact on contemporary art and featured in major public collections worldwide.

Heinz Mack has focused on the aesthetic possibilities of vibration and luminosity since the beginning of his career in the late 1950s as co-founder of the global ZERO movement with fellow artist and philosophy student Otto Piene. Light in Mack’s work suggests both the solar light of the sun and the chemical light of the mushroom cloud. In Mack’s work, brightness is not only a natural phenomenon but also, emerging in the wake of two world wars and under the shadow of the threat of nuclear conflict, his work suggests the interrelation of the duality of life and death. These twin poles of human experience are also captured in the ZERO group’s manifesto-like writings, which convey an interest in new possibilities, as suggested by the word “zero" itself, which ZERO’s practitioners dramatically likened to the culmination of a rocket launch countdown.

Though based in Düsseldorf, ZERO was a loose allegiance of artists working internationally, engaging with figures as diverse as Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, and Yayoi Kusama. While involving optical, kinetic, and installation art from the start, many of the ZERO artists were among the pioneers reanimating the historical avant-garde trope of monochrome painting in the postwar period. Mack was one of these. In keeping with his generation’s use of single-color painting to isolate a particular formal effect, Mack turned to the monochrome early in his career as a device to set off vibratory effects, which in turn suggested a way to harness light. In the dynamic structures Mack began making in 1955 he realized that, in creating a subtly variegated topography within a field of a single color, he could elucidate luminous effects through the changing way light hits different passages across a painting’s varied topography. For example, in Ohne Titel (1958) Mack incised a grid of linear striations into red synthetic resin, and did the same with white resin in White Silence (1960). Works like these activate the viewer, since the quality of effects change as one moves around the painting’s heterogeneous surface.

Embracing the numinous qualities of light, Mack introduced metallics into his practice, such as the silver resin used to create the choppy surface of Vibration der Schatten (1958). Mack followed his friend Yves Klein, who called himself the painter of blue, by fashioning himself the painter of silver. This inevitably suggested to Mack that he could work with actual metals, as in Vibration (1959), where the artist hand embossed an aluminum panel. These reliefs encourage even further the play of light introduced in the dynamic structures, as it radiates off Mack’s worked metallic surfaces. From there, Mack progressed into fully three-dimensional works, which occupy the space shared with the viewer, as in the free-standing aluminum folding screen Ohne Titel (1972). Mack did not feel limited to only pursuing one idea at a time, or that he had to retire a particular way of working. As such, he would periodically return to certain formats, such as the metal reliefs, a recent example of which is Ohne Titel (2022), which uses an “x” motif to animate an aluminum surface, differing from, but operating similarly to, the textured fan-like composition found in the 1972 screen.

Another development was into kinetic work, such as Japanische Trias (1970), which Mack made during the year he was a guest professor at Osaka University in Japan. Here Mack transposed his signature textured surfaces onto rotating discs, which further activate a changeable dance of luminous effects. This ballet of light is extended in a recent kinetic sculpture, Immaterial Erscheinung (2022), which presents the ghostlike play of a glowing transparent sphere floating in front of a cube.

Other recent work demonstrates Mack’s ongoing interest in environmental works, where the viewer occupies the dramatic space of a darkened room saturated with light effects. These are also conveyed in paintings, like Night View (2005) where phases reminiscent of a lunar eclipse are captured on a canvas surface. Fully dimensional sculptures such as Netz-Stele (2004) bring metallized light effects fully into the round.

More recently Mack has developed painterly ways of exploring light through compositions that juxtapose prismatic fields and lines of color. These works reference art history, harking back to Orphists like Sonia and Robert Delaunay, who pushed toward abstraction with their dynamic rainbow color spectrums. The bright speeding color vectors in Mack’s recent paintings reference the ambient bouncing light rays activated by his earlier work. For example, Chromatische Composition (2022) contains a shimmering Paul Klee-like tessellation of pastel-hued color bars. Other works in the Chromatische Konstellation series take differing approaches, as in a 2013 work, where lines of color zig and zag across an atmospheric blue ground, while in a 2022 work a grid of white squares animate geometric color blocked passages. These recent works demonstrate that Mack is far from done with his now seven- decade-long exploration of vibration and light’s endless possibilities and the multifaceted readings they provoke.

– Alex Bacon, Visiting Scholar, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Heinz Mack | From ZERO until Today will be on view from May 9 – June 14, 2025, at Almine Rech in Tribeca, New York.

Address
361 Broadway,
New York, NY
10013, USA

Opening hours
Tuesday — Saturday | 10 am – 6 pm

'Reflections on Heinz Mack' by Valerie Hillings:
"I recall my first visit with Heinz Mack, now more than 25 years ago. I took a taxi from the Mönchengladbach train station to his home one winter evening. This began the first of many conversations with Mack about his creative vision and production, which has spanned decades (and parts of two centuries) and multiple mediums. Light has always played a central role in his art, serving as medium, subject, and a conceptual bridge between nature and culture. His series of Stelen (Pillars) have always stood out to me because of their important role in his landmark Sahara Project (1959), which advocated for the desert as a viable space for presenting and experiencing art, a proposal that was both of and ahead of his time. In his 1966 solo show at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York, Mack posed in a gallery filled with Stelen, an installation that emphasized the physical relationship of the viewer to works characterized by both a palpable presence and immaterial form. This description can also be applied to his metal reliefs, from the earliest, more linear examples related to his 1950s Dynamic Structure paintings to his almost ethereal representations of wings reminiscent of those found in Renaissance paintings. These were the works that I thought of as quintessentially Mack, as indeed they are, but when I visited him at his studio in Ibiza while working on a major 2014 ZERO show at the Guggenheim, he introduced me to his then-current paintings, which formally echoed earlier pictures yet were defined by exuberant fields of color. These works, like all that are part of his œuvre, reflect Mack’s enduring commitment to bringing light into the world through art."

— Valerie Hillings, Director & CEO of the North Carolina Museum of Art.

About Heinz Mack:
Heinz Mack (b. 1931, Germany) is the co-founder of the ZERO movement, known for his explorations of light, color, and movement through painting, sculpture, and installation. Heinz Mack's work is included in the collections of: the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US, and the Tate Modern, London, UK, among others. His work has been exhibited in major institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, US; the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands; and is part of the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, US, and the Tate Modern, London, UK, among others.

Image credits:
Heinz Mack, 'Untitled' (Chromatic Constellation), 2022. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of Archive Heinz Mack.

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SOCIÉTÉ x Frieze New York

Preview Days: May 7 – 8, 2025
On View: May  9 – 11, 2025

May 6, 2025 (New York, United States) – Berlin-based SOCIÉTÉ will participate in the 13th edition of Frieze New York from May 7 – 11, 2025, at The Shed, 545 West 30th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. The gallery will present a diverse selection of works by Trisha Baga, Petra Cortright, Salim Green, Conny Maier, Jeanette Mundt, Bunny Rogers and Marianna Simnett at Booth C 8.

Conny Maier, FASS, 2025. Oil, pigment, oil stick on canvas. 183 x 133 x 5 cm. 72 x 52 1/2 x 2 in.

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MEDIA CONTACT

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com
Ena Alva | Account Manager | ena@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

Address
The Shed
545 West 30th Street
New York, NY 10001
United States

Preview Days
Wednesday, May 7 (invitation only) | 11 am – 7 pm
Thursday, May 8 (Members and invitation only preview) | 11 am – 1 pm
General admission tickets | 1 pm – 7 pm

Fair Days
Friday, May 9: 11 am – 7 pm
Saturday, May 10: 11 am – 7 pm
Sunday, May 11: 11 am – 5 pm

Image credits:
Photography by Trevor Good. Courtesy of the artist and SOCIÉTÉ, Berlin.

GATHERING REVIVES COLOGNE’S LEGENDARY CAFÉ CENTRAL

May 5, 2025 (Cologne, Germany) – GATHERING gallery proudly announces the grand reopening of the legendary Central in Cologne — a vibrant café, bar, and cultural hotspot that once stood at the heart of the city’s avant-garde and intellectual scene in the 1980s. Nestled at the center of the bohemian quarter, this iconic venue — where artists, writers, musicians, and provocateurs once mingled — is set for a renaissance in April 2025, right alongside the new GATHERING Cologne location just down the street. Revitalized with a bold new vision, Central will see the reinstallation of the iconic Kippenberger Mirrors, alongside caricatures of guests painted for the café’s fifth anniversary in 1991. These will be paired with new dynamic, site-specific interventions by contemporary artists, such as Stefan Brüggemann and Tai Shani. With a transformed interior, new cuisine concept, and the debut of the stylish new Peters Bar, this storied space is ready to reclaim its cultural legacy.

Central was more than a café — it was an intellectual arena, a vibrant laboratory of artistic experimentation and exchange that shaped Cologne’s cultural landscape. Martin Kippenberger, Jörg Immendorff, Günter Förg, Udo Kier, among many other artists made it the go-to space for radical creativity. Simultaneously, lectures by Peter Sloterdijk, Stefan Heym, and Johan Galtung extended its influence beyond its walls. Kippenberger, closely tied to owner Dr. Werner Peters, made the above Hotel Chelsea his home and left a lasting imprint on Central. His creative touch was everywhere—from the installation of his famous mirrors to reimagining rooms at the hotel and adding his distinctive brushstrokes, turning the café itself into an integral part of his artistic practice.

For decades, Cologne was a magnet for artistic innovation — a European crossroads where German artists like Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter converged with a wave of American and international artists, from Nam June Paik and John Cage to Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Robert Gober. The city’s freewheeling energy made it an essential stop on the global art circuit, with Central at its beating heart—a gathering place for radical thinkers, musicians, and the avant-garde. Today with new galleries opening in the neighborhood, Cologne is undergoing a cultural renaissance. The return of Central honors its legacy while contributing to the city’s creative resurgence.

Central will blend echoes of its rich past with a bold, contemporary vision. A standout feature is the bar, which serves as a striking visual centerpiece, featuring a site-specific installation in modernized aluminum by Mexican artist Stefan Brüggemann. Anchoring the space, the bar visually and conceptually bridges the gap between history and innovation. Set in the corner of the café is the doorway to Peters Bar — named in honor of Dr. Werner Peters, the beloved cultural impresario behind Central’s glory days — providing a more intimate ambiance. Wrapped in deep red hues and softly illuminated, the velvet textures and warm lighting of Peters Bar evoke a sense of intrigue and nostalgia. At its heart, a bespoke carpet designed by Turner Prize-winning British artist Tai Shani adds depth and character, upholding the motif of contemporary art which lies at the heart of Central. Honoring the history of the café, Kippenberger’s iconic mirrors drawn at the café’s fifth anniversary will be reinstalled in the space for the first time in ten years.

The new restaurant menu is shaped by German and Northern European cuisine with a Mediterranean influence, recalling another dining destination in GATHERING’s portfolio, MIRA in Ibiza. Sigfredo Scuticchio, leading both MIRA and Central, describes the latter as a “restaurant marrying traditional and modern approaches, influenced by the history of the place itself.”

Alex Flick, founder of GATHERING and newly responsible for Central explains: “After meeting Werner Peters, the owner of Hotel Chelsea and Central, I was deeply moved to walk the same halls as many of my artistic heroes. Our expansion here is about tapping into that legacy and contributing to its next chapter. The energy is here, the history is undeniable, and the appetite for something new is palpable. With Central and our new gallery space, we want to be part of Cologne’s cultural revival, creating a place where art, ideas, and community come together in a way that feels both forward-looking and deeply rooted in the city’s artistic heritage.”

Coinciding with the reopening of Central, GATHERING inaugurates its third and new gallery location in Cologne with a solo exhibition of the late German artist Sibylle Ruppert (1924–2011) on view until May 17, 2025. Her work has not been shown in Cologne since 1971.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)

Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Addresses
Central
Jülicher Str. 1
50674 Cologne, Germany

GATHERING Cologne
Roon Str. 108
50675 Cologne, Germany

ABOUT GATHERING:

Founded in 2022 in the heart of Soho, London, GATHERING is a contemporary art gallery, presenting a diverse exhibition programme of international emerging voices alongside established artists, including Emanuel de Carvalho, Tamara K.E., Soojin Kang, Ndayé Kouagou, Wynnie Mynerva and Tai Shani. In 2023, GATHERING inaugurated GLASSHOUSE, an alternative strand of programming which fosters emergent creative practitioners alongside GATHERING’s main exhibitions. In 2024, the gallery expanded to Sant Miquel de Balansat on the island of Ibiza, carrying the cutting-edge programming and artist-led ethos of GATHERING to an international stage.

GATHERING is a member of the Gallery Climate Coalition and works with The Anti-Slavery Collective and Embode.

Image Credits:

1. Peters Bar in Central, 2025. Photography by Hendrik Poggenpohl.
2. Main Room of Central, 2025. Photography by Hendrik Poggenpohl.
3. Exterior image of Central, 2025. Photography by Hendrik Poggenpohl.

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KUNSTHALLE SCHWEINFURT PRESENTS ROLF SACHS’S LARGEST INSTITUTIONAL EXHIBITION TO DATE

Press Preview: July 17, 2025, 2:00 PM

On View: July 18 – October 5, 2025

April 16, 2025 (Germany) – Kunsthalle Schweinfurt presents Rolf Sachs: be-rühren, the artist's most comprehensive institutional exhibition to date, offering a survey of his multidisciplinary oeuvre from the 1990s to today. On view from July 18 – October 5, 2025, the exhibition features over 150 works, ranging from modular furniture, photography, and sculpture to his latest paintings, which have now become an integral part of his practice. The title be-rühren, a wordplay on the German verb ‘to touch’, captures Sachs's focus: a deeply empathetic and sensory exploration of the human condition.

Rolf Sachs: be-rühren is conceived as a journey through the artist’s career-long experimentation. Taking over the entire ground floor of the museum and unfolding in a non-chronological order, the exhibition invites visitors to engage with Sachs's bold, multifaceted practice. Each room showcases individual bodies of work and site-specific installations, revealing his distinctively playful and inquisitive nature across a variety of mediums. The exhibition also proposes a transversal perspective on the ideas that have shaped his practice from his beginnings to today — a poetic sensibility, an empathetic approach, a fascination with materiality and a continuous reimagining of domestic objects.

Transforming Found Objects

The exhibition delves into the artist’s long-lasting fascination with everyday objects and his sensitivity to a wide variety of materials he has worked with, exploring how these elements run through his entire oeuvre. A room reuniting sculptures from the past 30 years reveals how Sachs has recontextualized everyday objects and materials in a humorous and deeply reflective manner, evident in pieces such as Angst (depicted above) and Sisyphus. This approach is also reflected in a series of monumental vitrines, Heu, Ross, Wolle, and Mist, filled with hay, manure, wool, and horsehair, or in Bodenständigkeit, a pine branch cast in bronze. These works also stand as a testament to Sachs’s deep connection to Alpine culture and express the artist's desire to preserve objects and memories with synesthetic or personal resonance. Presented for the first time since the mid-1990s, Sachs’s early Ha-all environment draws attention to the emotional potential of a seemingly mundane material like sound-absorbing foam.

Through Sachs’s Lens

In his photographic practice, Sachs primarily employs long exposures and flash techniques to capture dynamic movement and the fleeting, mysterious essence of people, sculptures, and everyday objects. Drawing inspiration from the traditional still life genre, his Moving Stills and Shadows reflect on the passage of time and humanity’s yearning to capture it. They are also an exercise in morphing an object’s material essence through various light sources, giving props a life of their own. In his Shadows series, Sachs dissolves the inherent solidity of glass by creating nebulous ghostly effects. In Moving Stills, toilet paper, cans and spaghetti are transformed into lively and ambiguous beings. Both projects reveal Sachs’s particular sensibility towards expressing human emotions through objects. In his yearlong Camera in Motion series, Sachs draws from his Swiss upbringing, using experimental photography and long exposures to transport viewers on a train journey through the Albula railway line, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mirroring the speed of the journey, Sachs's photographs capture fleeting, random moments, showcasing the inevitable passage of time. The contrast between the focused object and the passing landscape causes the works to hover between abstraction and reality, photography and painting.

A New Interpretation of Form and Function

The exhibition presents Sachs's modular furniture series p-arts + fun c'tion for the first time in over 30 years, offering a rare glimpse into this conceptual body of work. By reducing his creations to the fundamental elements of angles and cubes, Sachs challenges traditional conventions with his chairs, armchairs, and desks, all free of nails or screws, relying solely on gravity and friction for assembly. None of the furniture pieces are static; their form remains dynamic and fluid, capable of taking on an infinite number of configurations. This innovative approach allows the pieces to be reinterpreted repeatedly, giving them a certain sense of "freedom". With the Attraction bed, Sachs alludes to the varied characters of its users, where cold steel meets warm wood, suggesting a certain empathy between the two halves of the bed, just as ideally between the people who use it.

Since 1992, Sachs has continually reinvented the Horgenglarus chair — a purely functional piece of furniture that is usually used in schools and administrative buildings. Using materials like silicone, slate, wax, felt, and resin, Sachs transforms the chair, offering a new, altered perception with each reinterpretation. This modest chair is consistently given a new “sense of self” through these distinct revisions.

Painting: A New Chapter in Sachs’s Oeuvre

The grand hall of the museum unveils the artist’s latest creative endeavour, a series of paintings and drawings that Sachs has rigorously devoted himself to since 2020. Conceptually distinct yet interconnected, the exhibition includes his Can Paintings, the Défroissage series, and the immediate, physically expressive Touchée works. These bodies of work, which often blur the lines between painting and object, are defined by a direct, physical engagement with the medium. The Touchée works are created through a tactile, empathetic process in which the artist uses his fingers to touch and paint the canvas. The result is often abstract, presenting a vibrant new form of expression born from the intimate nature of the process. Sachs’s painting, straddling abstraction and figuration, are a direct manifestation of his search for the intangible that transcends the body. His canvasses aim to establish an emotional and visceral connection with the viewer.

Parallel to Rolf Sachs’s exhibition at the Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, DISTANZ is publishing a 300-page, richly illustrated monograph titled Rolf Sachs. Edited by Coralie Malissard and Salvatore Lacagnina and designed by the London-based studio Kellenberger & White, the book features essays by notable contributors. Available in both English and German, it provides new perspectives on Sachs’s prolific career. (Release: Summer 2025).

The exhibition was created in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Exchange in Tübingen and was made possible by the generous support of the Schweinfurt Cultural Foundation, the District of Lower Franconia, the Schweinfurt Municipal Savings Bank Foundation and the Barbara Brockardt Foundation in Coburg.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)

Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS:

The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Exchange in Tübingen and is curated by Coralie Malissard, Studio Rolf Sachs.

Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, Rüfferstraße 4, 97421

Schweinfurt, Germany

https://www.kunsthalle-schweinfurt.de

Opening Hours:

Daily: 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Thursdays: 10:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Closed on Mondays (open on public holidays) 

About Rolf Sachs:

Rolf Sachs (b. 1955) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer currently based in Rome. He applies a distinctive humane and conceptual approach across a multitude of mediums, ranging from sculpture, photography, and design and through to architectural projects and set designs for opera and ballet. His move to Rome has inspired Sachs to finally dedicate himself seriously to painting. Since the 1990s, Sachs has challenged preconceived applications of materials, processes, and everyday objects, imbuing them with novel meaning. Deftly employing humor and wit, his work seeks to elicit emotional, sensory reactions. However, his work has nothing of the dryness that is often associated with conceptual art. Rather, it is full of humanity, sensibility, and respect towards the materials he uses. It is poetic, humorous, tongue and cheek, but never irreverent. Currently, his work is particularly focused on exploring the human psyche, people’s character, relationships, soul and spirit.

His work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Museum for Applied Art, Cologne; the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein; Stalla Madulain, Madulain; Hauser & Wirth, Gstaad; Galerie von Bartha, S-chanf and Monika Sprüth, Cologne.

https://rolfsachs.com/

@rolfsachsstudio

Image Credits:

1.      Rolf Sachs, 'Angst', 2013. Courtesy of Byron Slater.

2.      Rolf Sachs, 'Köln, Half Chair', 1992. Courtesy of Rolf Sachs Studio.

3.      Rolf Sachs, 'Statuette', 2020. Courtesy of Rolf Sachs Studio.

4.      Rolf Sachs, ‘Dirty Thoughts', 2009. Courtesy of Rolf Sachs Studio.

5.      Rolf Sachs, 'Allure', 2025. Courtesy of Rolf Sachs Studio.

6.      Rolf Sachs, 'Gloom and Faith', 2024. Courtesy of Rolf Sachs Studio.

7.      Rolf Sachs, 'Frühling', 2022. Courtesy of Rolf Sachs Studio.

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SOCIÉTÉ x Art Düsseldorf 2025

VIP Preview: April 10, 2025
On View: April 11 – 13, 2025

April 8, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany) – Berlin-based SOCIÉTÉ will participate in the seventh edition of Art Düsseldorf from April 11–13, 2025, at the Areal Böhler convention center. The gallery will be presenting a diverse selection of works at booth G06 by Trisha Baga, Tina Braegger, Kaspar Müller, Jeanette Mundt, Bunny Rogers and Marianna Simnett.

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MEDIA CONTACT

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com
Ena Alva | Account Manager | ena@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

Address
Areal Böhler
Hansaallee 321
40549 Düsseldorf

VIP Preview
Thursday, April 10
VIP Preview | 12.00 – 16.00
Official Opening | 16.00 – 20.00

Fair Days
Friday, April 11 | 12.00 – 19.00
Saturday, April 12 | 11.00 – 19.00
Sunday, April 11 | 11.00 – 18.00

Image credits: Photography by Trevor Good. Courtesy of the artists and SOCIÉTÉ, Berlin.

1. Jeanette Mundt, ‘Fire at Night’, 2024.

2. Marianna Simnett, ‘Demeter’, 2025.

3. Trisha Baga, ‘Mass Migration’, 2025.

4. Tina Braegger, ‘Baller’, 2024.

HEINZ MACK JOINS ALMINE RECH | ANNOUNCING GLOBAL REPRESENTATION

April 1, 2025 (Germany) – German artist Heinz Mack announces his global representation by Almine Rech, debuting the collaboration with his first solo exhibition at the gallery, on view from May 9 to June 14, 2025, at Almine Rech in Tribeca, New York. A key figure and co-founder of the ZERO movement, Mack is celebrated for his innovative exploration of light, space, and color, with an oeuvre that ranges from paintings to monumental outdoor installations, leaving a lasting impact on contemporary art and featured in major public collections worldwide.

 “I love the story of the ZERO group, founded in 1957 in Düsseldorf by Mack and Piene and joined by Uecker in 1960. ZERO represented the zero hour, a new beginning after the destruction of the Second World War. Mack decided to use light and glass, it was like 10 years earlier but it’s echoing the Californian 'Light and Space' movement that forms the basis of the gallery's program since the 1990’s. Mack soon began to develop his painting work, abstract approach of light and space through color research.”
— Almine Rech

Heinz Mack was born in Lollar (Hesse, Germany) in 1931. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf from 1950 to 1953. At the University of Cologne, he studied philosophy until 1956, graduating in both programmes with state exams.

In 1957, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene founded the ZERO movement in Düsseldorf, which Günther Uecker joined in 1961. This art movement – to be understood as ground zero, from which new aesthetic principles and ideas were developed – drew together artists such as Yves Klein, Fontana, Manzoni, Castellani, Tinguely and Schoonhoven, who had a distinct influence on ZERO, while at the same time receiving energy and ideas from ZERO. Within a decade, ZERO became what is today considered one of the most important international avant-garde movements after World War II.

In 2014, a major ZERO exhibition opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, which subsequently travelled to the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul, drawing a total of almost 700.000 visitors.

In 1959, Mack conceived the so-called Sahara Project, in which he expressed a strong artistic interest in exploring pure light in areas of unspoiled nature. From 1962 on, he installed his “artificial gardens” in the African desert, consisting of sand-reliefs, wings, cubes, mirrors, sails, and monumental light-stelae. This experimental practice with the force of light is shown in the highly respected and awarded film Tele-Mack (1968). In 1976, Mack realized his utopian projects in the Arctic, where he installed swimming sculptures of acrylic glass, light-flowers, prismatic pyramids, ice crystals and fire-rafts. In 2022, the monograph Mack – Sahara was published by Hirmer.

Besides his participation in documenta III (1964) and documenta VI (1977), Mack represented Germany at the XXXVth Venice Biennale in 1970. He also obtained a professorship in Osaka, Japan, and became a full member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, to which he belonged until 1992. In 2015, the senate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf unanimously elected Mack as an honorary member.

The artist has been honoured with major awards including the Premio Marzotto (1963), the Premier Prix Arts Plastiques at the IVth Paris Biennale (1965), the Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia (1992), Grand Federal Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany (2011), and the Moses Mendelssohn Medal (2017), among others.

In 2014, the sculpture ensemble The Sky Over Nine Columns was inaugurated on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice: Nine columns, each measuring eight metres, covered with more than 850.000 gold-plated tesserae. In 2015, the ensemble was shown in front of the Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul, and in 2016 moved to Valencia – surrounded by the futuristic architecture of Santiago Calatrava at Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. One year later, it was exhibited on the shore of Lake St. Moritz in the Swiss Engadin.

Light is a central theme in the non-representational art of Heinz Mack. His multifaceted oeuvre includes sculptures of various materials – also monumental ones for urban spaces, light reliefs, light cubes, light rotors, light stelae, paintings, drawings, pastels, ink drawings, graphics, photography, mosaics, ceramics, conceptual designs of public spaces and interiors, stage settings, as well as literary works.

Heinz Mack’s works of art have been shown in 400 solo and numerous group exhibitions. His works are among the holdings of some 170 public collections. A multitude of books and catalogues, as well as films, document his work.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

Image Credits:
Heinz Mack with his painting Untitled (Chromatic Constellation), 2013,  Acrylic on canvas , 291 x 315 cm, 114 1/2 x 124 in. Signed, dated "mack 13". Photography by Archive Studio Mack. © Heinz Mack. Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech.

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SOCIÉTÉ PRESENTS ‘CHARADES’ | A SOLO EXHIBITION BY MARIANNA SIMNETT

Press Preview: April 30, 2025 | 11 - 3 pm
Opening Reception: May 1, 2025 | 6 - 8 pm
On View: May 2 – June 28, 2025

April 30, 2025 (Berlin, Germany) – SOCIÉTÉ is pleased to announce a solo exhibition with the British-Croatian artist Marianna Simnett. In Charades, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Simnett delves into the fluid boundaries between individual and collective behavior in new works that explore  notions of masquerade, power, and ritual. Drawing on mythology, social rituals, and rites of passage, her new video, paintings, and sculptures evince a deep fascination with ever-shifting presentations of the self, which manifests in flamboyant, macabre displays that flout social taboos and expectations. The works’ frequent invocation of theatrical elements and techniques underscore the underlying tension at the heart of performative excess–its ability to disrupt established norms and recuperate space for difference, while also being weaponized to deceive, manipulate, or obscure.

The video work Leda Was a Swan extends Simnett’s ongoing interest in warping ancient myth to explore fundamental questions about power, desire, and the Other. Inspired by her research into a recently uncovered fresco of Leda in Pompeii, the work revisits the ancient Greek myth in which Zeus, disguised as a swan, assaults the Spartan queen. Simnett’s reinterpretation of the story complicates the traditional victim-aggressor binary, depicting Leda not as a passive victim of Zeus’ aggression, but a complex figure capable of desire, choice, and subversion. Zeus is incarnated as a puppet, Leda’s own hand, a disquieting subversion that is reflected in Simnett’s use of a custom AI model to generate animated sequences from the video’s imagery, further complicating the power-play between puppet and master, human and machine. 

A focus on the mutability of power—its construction, subversion, and performance—carries throughout the exhibition. This is particularly evident in Simnett’s recent sculptural works, where familiar symbols are transformed into opulent, ornamental forms that question the nature of control: symbols of feminine beauty veer toward the grotesque, while sacrosanct rites of passage appear as lavishly embellished finger puppetry. These works subtly parody the reliquary—with its ornate enshrinement of power, sanctity, and devotion—serving instead to unravel the ambivalence, fetishization, and performativity of veneration. The merkin, a form of pubic covering dating back to the 16th century, makes a subtle appearance in the costuming for Leda Was a Swan, gesturing toward the historical and contemporary policing of gender and sexuality. Its paradoxical nature—as both a means of protection and an object of exposure—underscores its function as both armor or embellishment, a means of concealment or display, which Simnett further explores in a sculptural work that takes the form of a merkin case full of masquerade paraphernalia. 

A dreamlike sense of suspense and melancholy pervades a new series of oil paintings, which oscillate between intimate rituals and lavish spectacle. Seething beneath these seemingly disparate moments are intimate choreographies of dominance and submission—felt in the seduction of performance, the lull of social traditions, or the soft friction of being pushed just slightly too hard. Charades draws its title from the classic parlor game in which one person acts out a syllable while others guess the entire word or phrase. Yet, beyond its playful origins, the term “charade” has also come to signify a sham, a pretense, a mockery, or a false display—Simnett pulls back the curtain to reveal the layers beneath the mask: performances that carry the weight of unspoken desires and resistant imaginaries.

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NOTES TO EDITORS:

Charades by Marianna Simnett will be on view at SOCIÉTÉ from May 12– June 28, 2025.

Address
Wielandstraße 26
10707 Berlin

Press Preview
April 30 | 11 - 3 pm

Opening Reception
May 1 | 6 - 8 pm

Gallery Weekend Berlin
May 2 | 11 - 9 pm
May 3 | 11 - 7 pm
May 4 | 11 - 6 pm

General Opening Hours
Monday – Saturday | 10 am – 6 pm
Closed on Sundays

About SOCIÉTÉ:
SOCIÉTÉ is a Berlin-based contemporary art gallery with a global reach. The gallery’s bold curatorial approach plays a pivotal role in advancing its artists’ visions, supporting major museum exhibitions, biennials, and acquisitions by leading institutional collections worldwide. Operating in both the primary and secondary markets, SOCIÉTÉ provides curated advisory services to select clients.
Beyond its exhibitions, the gallery’s publishing initiative, EDITION SOCIÉTÉ, collaborates with prominent writers and graphic designers to produce artist books, catalogues, and, more recently, high-end artist editions.

SOCIÉTÉ is an active presence at major international art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Basel Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze New York, Frieze London, ARCOmadrid, and Gallery Weekend Berlin.

About Marianna Simnett:
Marianna Simnett (b. 1986, London) lives and works in Berlin and New York. Her work was part of Manifesta 15, Barcelona and her solo exhibition WINNER was recently on view at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. Simnett’s first work for the stage, entitled GORGON, was commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and premiered at HAU 2, Berlin in 2023. Her work The Severed Tail was presented at the 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams and at the 66th BFI London Film Festival, British Film Institute, London. Simnett has had solo exhibitions internationally at venues including City Gallery Wellington, Wellington; Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen; MA, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich; MMK, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; The New Museum, New York; and Zabludowicz Collection, London.

Image Credits:
Marianna Simnett, Scored, 2025. Oil on canvas. 110 x 150 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin. Photo credit: Trevor Good.

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ARTEFACT GALLERY PRESENTS ‘DAS GROßE ERMATTEN’ | LINUS BECKMANN’S DEBUT SOLO SHOW

Private Preview: April 10, 2025 | 6 – 8 PM

On View: April 11, 2025 – June 13, 2025

April 8, 2025 (Berlin, Germany) – ARTEFACT Gallery is proud to present Das große Ermatten, the debut solo exhibition of Berlin-based painter Linus Beckmann. On view from April 11 - June 13, 2025, the exhibition will unveil an entirely new series of paintings and drawings on parchment paper created exclusively for this occasion, offering an in-depth exploration of Beckmann’s distinctive narrative style, where layered painting compositions give rise to enigmatic scenes.

Beckmann’s style is defined by evocative sceneries, shrouded in a haze that blurs the line between reality and the surreal. Beneath translucent layers of glaze, mysterious beings and allegorical contexts emerge, inviting viewers to uncover hidden narratives. In his personal approach to narrative painting, the artist shifts attention away from the subjects’ gestures, allowing the atmosphere of the composition to drive the story. Beckmann often abstracts and manipulates his figures to conform to the limits of the canvas, establishing a dynamic relationship between the protagonists and their environment. Drawing inspiration from Renaissance and Baroque masters, he reimagines historical influences through a dreamlike lens, infusing his work with otherworldly mystery.

The title, Das große Ermatten, contains the layered German term ‘ermatten’ that can evoke surrender or exhaustion without a precise English equivalent, and sets the tone for the exhibition, with figures drifting between dreams, sleep and death, defeated yet firmly open to fate. Here, surrender becomes a form of strength, blurring the line between being overtaken and embracing the inevitable. The large-scale oil paintings Ta-tah! (2025) and Ermatt (2025) explore themes inspired by German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Referencing his renowned paintings The Beheading of John the Baptist and Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Beckmann deconstructs their emblematic qualities while highlighting the contradictory vibrancy of the colors that define these violent scenes.

Beckmann brings his motifs to life using centuries-old glazing techniques, adapting them to suit his own painting approach. Layering each painting with 8 to 12 coats of oil paint and glaze, the process demands considerable time and patience, as each layer must dry before the next is applied. Much like an MRI scan revealing hidden details beneath the surface, this complex method builds depth in the work, with every detail carefully added layer by layer. His paintings are not only an expression of creativity but, above all, embody a living homage to a technique passed down through generations. Through his use of color, the hues appear to glow from within the paintings, as if light is trapped between the layers rather than coming from the surface, giving each piece a tangible depth. The ultra-thin layers maintain the canvas texture, encouraging a dynamic interaction between the medium, the figures, and the viewer. The reflective resin layers not only highlight the materials’ role in conveying meaning but also create a surface that captures the viewer’s reflection, inviting them to become part of these dreamlike narratives, adding an additional layer of symbolism.

The debut solo exhibition by painter Linus Beckmann highlights ARTEFACT Gallery’s ongoing commitment to supporting Berlin’s dynamic art scene. With a sharp focus on emerging talent, the gallery offers exhibitions to artists who are not yet represented, giving them a platform to showcase their work to new audiences and collectors.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)

Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

Alexandros Papathanasis | Communications Associate | | alexandros@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Das große Ermatten will be on view at ARTEFACT Gallery from April 11 – June 13, 2025.

Private Preview: April 10, 2025 | 6 – 8 p.m. | RSVP to art@annarosathomae.com

Artefact Gallery, Geisbergstraße 12 | 10777 Berlin

Monday – Friday | 10 – 6 p.m. and by appointment.                             

About ARTEFACT Gallery:

ARTEFACT is a Berlin-based gallery and project space presenting contemporary art and collectible design. We are dedicated to fostering a dynamic and inclusive community by supporting both emerging and established artists and designers in articulating their unique perspectives. Our collaborators are entrusted with unrestricted creativity, with the freedom to explore, experiment, and express themselves without limitations. 

Dedicated to curating a select number of shows annually, ARTEFACT provides artists with prolonged visibility and visitors with ample time to engage deeply with the exhibits.  Throughout its programming, ARTEFACT alternates between exhibitions solely dedicated to art or design and those that seamlessly blend both disciplines, fostering innovative and stimulating exchange attained through interdisciplinarity. 

artefact.berlin | @artefactgallery.berlin

Image Credits:
1. Linus Beckmann, 'Ta-Tah' ,2025. Courtesy of the artist and ARTEFACT Gallery.
2. Linus Beckmann, 'o. T.', 2025. Courtesy of the artist and ARTEFACT Gallery.

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SOCIÉTÉ PRESENTS 'OBSESSION' BY JEANETTE MUNDT

Opening Preview: March 19, 2025
On View: March 20 – April 19, 2025

March 18, 2025 (Berlin, Germany) – SOCIÉTÉ is pleased to announce Obsession, an exhibition of new drawings by Jeanette Mundt, on view from March 20 – April 19, 2025.

For Jeanette Mundt, drawing is a form of visual thinking—an innate impulse that enables her to process ideas and make relations between them. Drawing is a form of discovery. A means of tapping the connections between things, of testing limits, of opening oneself to chance. Neither a fixed endpoint nor a predefined goal, this liminal and unfixed creative space is a zone of continual anticipation, “a way of being exposed to what comes.”¹ The fleeting, meditative quality of drawing as a practice is reflected in how the works in Obsession were created “on the move,” often serving as a creative anchor and visual diary during moments of reflection and travel while away from the studio.

Jeanette Mundt’s dynamic, formally omnivorous practice freely taps a variety of input, ranging from popular film and television to personal photographs and the history of painting. These different references don’t coalesce in the manner of a frictionless pastiche, but are repeated and reworked in streams of images. Each work is created in reference to a previous work coming before it, whether painted on canvas or drawn on paper. However, the relation between painting and drawing doesn’t follow the traditional logic of the sketch versus finished work. Instead, Mundt’s images emerge according to what the writer Elise Duryee-Browner calls a “biosemiotic evolution.” Each work spawns from a previous one, creating chains of images that mutate and multiply. As Duryee-Browner writes, “Each individual painting carries, pregnant, other works within it.”²

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MEDIA CONTACT

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com
Ena Alva | Account Manager | ena@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

Address
Wielandstraße 26
10707 Berlin

Opening Hours
Monday – Saturday | 10 am – 6 pm
Closed on Sundays

About SOCIÉTÉ

SOCIÉTÉ is a Berlin-based contemporary art gallery with a global reach. The gallery’s bold curatorial approach plays a pivotal role in advancing its artists’ visions, supporting major museum exhibitions, biennials, and acquisitions by leading institutional collections worldwide. Operating in both the primary and secondary markets, SOCIÉTÉ provides curated advisory services to select clients.

Beyond its exhibitions, the gallery’s publishing initiative, EDITION SOCIÉTÉ, collaborates with prominent writers and graphic designers to produce artist books, catalogues, and, more recently, high-end artist editions.

SOCIÉTÉ is an active presence at major international art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Basel Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze New York, Frieze London, ARCOmadrid, and Gallery Weekend Berlin.

About Jeanette Mundt
Jeanette Mundt (b. 1982, USA) lives and works in New York. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally at venues including TANK, Shanghai; New Museum, New York; G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; David Zwirner, New York; Company, New York; Overduin and Co., Los Angeles; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; Bridget Donahue, New York; STANCE Gallery, Stockholm; Palazzo Barberini, Rome; Nahmad Contemporary, New York; David Lewis Gallery, New York; among other venues. Her work has been included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, as well as the group exhibitions The Rest, Lisson Gallery; The Vitalist Economy of Painting curated by Isabelle Graw at Galerie Neu, Berlin; Painting: Now and Forever, Part III, Matthew Marks and Green Naftali, New York; Sputterances, Metro Pictures, New York.

Footnotes:
1. Yves Bonnefoy, quoted in Jean-Luc Nancy, The Pleasure in Drawing (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 3.
2. Elise Duryee-Browner, “Paint Like Blood,” in Mundt Mundt Mundt (Berlin: Edition Société, 2024), 92.

Image credits:
Jeanette Mundt, Untitled, oil on paper, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and SOCIÉTÉ, Berlin.

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GATHERING ANNOUNCES NEW GALLERY OPENING IN COLOGNE | APRIL 2025

GATHERING Cologne’s inaugural exhibition 'Indiscreet Jewels', presents the work of the late Sibylle Ruppert, on view from April 4 – May 17, 2025.

March 14, 2025 (Cologne, Germany) – GATHERING is thrilled to announce the opening of its new gallery in Cologne on April 4, 2025, marking an exciting expansion alongside its existing locations in London and Ibiza. With this launch, GATHERING deepens its commitment to artist-led programming and bold, cutting-edge exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition, Indiscreet Jewels, on view from April 4 – May 17, 2025, will be a solo presentation of the late German artist Sibylle Ruppert (1942–2011). This marks her inaugural solo exhibition in Cologne and the first showing of her work there since 1971, paying tribute to the European underground art scene and reaffirming her lasting influence on contemporary visual culture.

Ruppert’s work spans the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, forming a radical body of paintings, drawings, and collages that exist at the intersection of dark surrealism, eroticism, and deeply personal experiences. Her aesthetic is both brutal and intimate, confronting the viewer with imagery that feels at once unsettling and deeply expressive. In her surrealist compositions, the human body is never static—it writhes, strains, collapses, and mutates, seemingly caught in a monstrous transformation from recognizable anatomy into distorted, abstract masses. The exhibition will feature charcoal and pencil drawings, all distinguished by their intricate, highly detailed renderings of surreal and fantastical bodily forms.

Ruppert’s work is deeply influenced by the morbid and transgressive writings of the Marquis de Sade, Lautréamont, and Georges Bataille, channeling their themes of desire, decay, and the grotesque into an uncompromising, visionary visual language.

“Cologne has long been one of Germany’s most vital cultural hubs—a city that shaped contemporary art history through its legendary artists, pioneering galleries and the world’s first art fair,” says GATHERING founder Alex Flick. “Our expansion here is about tapping into that legacy and contributing to its next chapter. The energy is here, the history is undeniable and the appetite for something new is palpable. With Café Central and our gallery space, we want to be part of Cologne’s cultural revival, creating a place where art, ideas, and community come together in a way that feels both forward-looking and deeply rooted in the city’s artistic heritage.”

GATHERING’s opening will coincide with the highly anticipated reopening of nearby Central, a café, bar, and cultural hub that shaped the local avant-garde and stood at the heart of the city's 1980s intellectual life, which will now also be operated by GATHERING.

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NOTES TO EDITORS:
 
Exhibition Details
Sibylle Ruppert
4 April – 17 May 2025
Roonstraße 108
50674 Cologne
 
About GATHERING:

Founded in 2022 in the heart of Soho, London, GATHERING is a contemporary art gallery, presenting a diverse exhibition programme of international emerging voices alongside established artists, including Emanuel de Carvalho, Tamara K.E., Soojin Kang, Ndayé Kouagou, Wynnie Mynerva and Tai Shani. In 2023, GATHERING inaugurated GLASSHOUSE, an alternative strand of programming which fosters emergent creative practitioners alongside GATHERING’s main exhibitions. In 2024, the gallery expanded to Sant Miquel de Balansat on the island of Ibiza, carrying the cutting-edge programming and artist-led ethos of GATHERING to an international stage.

GATHERING is a member of the Gallery Climate Coalition and works with The Anti-Slavery Collective and Embode.
 

Image credits: 

1. Entrance of GATHERING Cologne, 2025. Courtesy of GATHERING.
2. Sibylle Ruppert, 'Untitled' , Collage 27 x 20 cm Courtesy of Blue Velvet Projects and the Estate of Sibylle Ruppert. Sibylle Ruppert: Indiscreet Jewels, 4 April – 17 May 2025, Gathering, Cologne, Germany.
3. Sibylle Ruppert, 'Le Sphinx', 1977. 104 x 83 cm.Charcoal and crayon on paper. Photography by Volker Crone.
4. Installation View of 'Indiscreet Jewels' by Sibylle Ruppert, 2025. Courtesy of GATHERING.

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LE SIRENUSE IN POSITANO RE-OPENS FOR THE 2025 SEASON

The iconic luxury and lifestyle hotel on the Amalfi Coast Le Sirenuse is excited to announce its season opening on March 29.

March 12, 2025 (Positano, Italy) – We are delighted to announce the season opening at Le Sirenuse on March 29, 2025. Le Sirenuse opened in 1951, in what until then had been the Sersale family’s summer house in Positano. Today the 58-room Amalfi Coast resort is considered an Italian hospitality icon, though it still retains the intimate, cultured atmosphere of a private home. More than a hotel, Le Sirenuse has become a lifestyle reference bringing into fertile dialogue the worlds of fashion, culture, gastronomy, mixology and wellbeing.

Scenic La Sponda restaurant, informally glamorous bar-bistrot Aldo’s and the resort’s chic Pool Bar showcase this southern Italian region’s authentic seasonal produce, while the Don’t Worry Music Bar is a true insiders’ speakeasy in tune with the rhythm of Positano nights. Le Sirenuse also features a refreshingly contemporary Spa designed by architect Gae Aulenti, where a range of signature treatments are available, alongside a fitness area with two total-workout Megaformer machines. The hotel is celebrated worldwide for its all-inclusive weekly activities, which include trekking on some of the Amalfi Coast’s spectacular mountain trails and more leisurely sunset cruises on the Sant’Antonio, the family’s traditional gozzo fishing boat.

Now as in the past, Le Sirenuse is a family affair. Third-generation Sersales, Aldo and Francesco, are increasingly involved in the day-to-day running of a hotel that their parents Antonio and Carla began to manage in 1991. Carla currently curates Emporio Sirenuse, the resort wear and lifestyle brand she founded in 2013, which takes inspiration from the deep-rooted Mediterranean culture of this charmed enclave south of Naples.

Le Sirenuse has hosted many writers, artists and musicians in its long history. It has also been shaped, indoors and out, by the passion for collecting art and antiques of its owners – especially the late Franco Sersale, a traveler, photographer and aesthete of unerring taste. It was to celebrate this legacy, and to project it into the future, that Franco’s son Antonio and Carla launched the Artists at Le Sirenuse site-specific contemporary art programme in 2015, in collaboration with British art advisor and curator Silka Rittson-Thomas.

Once a year, a contemporary artist is invited to stay at the hotel to absorb inspirations and explore affinities, but also to discuss, with Antonio, Carla and Silka, where in the hotel’s busy fabric the work might find its niche. To date, ten artists have risen to the challenge, and a vibrant creation by the eleventh – Nicolas Party – was just unveiled in 2024 – the iconic pool of the hotel is now transformed into a large-scale mosaic work of art. The next artist of the programme will be announced in the spring of 2025.

MEDIA CONTACT
A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)
Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

Le Sirenuse
For more information, please visit www.sirenuse.it/en
Facebook | Instagram | @lesirenuse

Images Credits:
1. Le Sirenuse’s Pool by Nicolas Party. 2024. Glass mosaic tiles. 18.6x4.65m. Courtesy Nicolas Party and Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich. Milan.
2. Le Sirenuse’s Restaurant, 2023. Photography by Brechenmacher & Baumann.
3. Le Sirenuse, Room 93, 2023, Photography by Brechenmacher & Baumann.
4. Le Sirenuse, Franco’s Bar 2022. Courtesy of Le Sirenuse.
5. Le Sirenuse, Room 62, Photography by Brechenmacher & Baumann

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MOONARIJ x MATTER and SHAPE 2025 DESIGN SALON IN PARIS

On View: March 7 – 10, 2025

February 26, 2025 (Paris, France) – Berlin-based design brand MOONARIJ will present a diverse selection of glass vase collections at the second edition of MATTER and SHAPE, held March 7–10 in the Jardin des Tuileries, in Paris. At this cross-disciplinary design salon for 21st-century architecture, design, and fashion, MOONARIJ stands alongside brands from over 20 countries, showcasing its distinct artistic expression and Germany’s rich glassmaking tradition.

Born from a deep passion for the centuries-old tradition of vessel making, MOONARIJ brings its designs to life through close collaboration with small workshops in Berlin and Dresden. The result is a colorful range of one-of-a-kind vases, each from distinct collections, featuring unpredictable patterns and shapes, from flowing curves and swirls to bold geometric forms. Locally produced and meticulously handmade, these vases have captured the attention of collectors worldwide who value innovative design, while preserving the organic, tactile beauty of masterful artistry.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy (Berlin)

Anna Rosa Thomae | Founder | art@annarosathomae.com

NOTES TO EDITORS: 

On View from March 7 – 10, 2025. 

Address:
12 Rue Philippe de Girard,
75010 Paris,
France

Opening Times:
March 7, 2025: 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM
March 8, 2025: 9:30 AM – 7:00 PM
March 9, 2025: 9:30 AM – 7:00 PM
March 10, 2025: 9:30 AM – 6:00 PM

About MOONARIJ:
Moonarij is a Berlin-based, female-founded design brand focused on handcrafted vases. Captivated by the art of glass blowing, Johanna Wichelhaus teamed up with renowned glass artists in 2022 to develop first iterations of her sketches of striped bud vases. The designs evolved into the brand‘s first collections – the Oona, and the Narij, followed by the Large Bucket, Oona Baby, and Zigzag collection. Voluminous in shape, iridescent in color, and meticulously crafted, hand-blown, and hand-sculpted, Moonarij vases stand out as mesmerizing objects of beauty.
www.moonarij.com | @moonarij_objects

About MATTER and SHAPE:
MATTER and SHAPE is a new design salon in the heart of Paris, the first of its kind, unveiled during Paris Fashion Week in the Jardin des Tuileries in the spring of 2024. MATTER and SHAPE invites exhibitors, great and small, to present exceptional projects and products in an elevated setting, celebrating the culture of global design today. MATTER and SHAPE took place in a 3000sqm temporary space designed by Willo Perron of Perron Roettinger Studio. Featuring customised stands for 32 exhibitors, the salon also included a central cafe island, a pop-up restaurant by WE ARE ONA, a talk program, and a design bookstore and boutique. Powered by the international salon experts WSN, with the international network of Michela Pelizzari – Founder & Creative Director of the Milanese strategic consulting firm P:S. MATTER and SHAPE debuted with an inbuilt audience of boutique owners, buyers, and retail consultants from department stores and multi-brand boutiques around the world who visited the neighbouring salon PREMIERE CLASSE across the same 4-day period.
www.matterandshape.com

Image Credits:
1. MOONARIJ Moonjar collection. Courtesy of Mina Aichhorn, 2025.
2. MOONARIJ Production image. Courtesy of Emma Ball-Greene, 2024.
3. MOONARIJ Oona collection. Courtesy of Peter Langer, 2024.
4. MOONARIJ Narij collection. Courtesy of Mina Aichhorn, 2025.
5. MOONARIJ Large Bucket Collection. Courtesy of Peter Langer, 2024.
6. MOONARIJ Oona collection. Courtesy of Peter Langer, 2024.