SUGARSHACK | SALIM GREEN'S FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION IN EUROPE
Opening Reception: September 10, 2026 | 6 – 8 PM
On View: September 11 – October 24, 2026
On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, SOCIÉTÉ presents Sugarshack, the first solo exhibition of artist Salim Green in Europe, which will be on view from September 11 – October 3, 2026.
Salim Green describes his interdisciplinary practice as a process of “defining things by their edges.” His practice often adapts speculative models, such as Dark Forest Theory and related ideas, as frameworks to metabolize lived experience. With their resistant assertions of unknowability and interiority, Green’s works refuse the pull of settled meanings or clearly mapped identifications, deploying concealment, opacity, and illegibility as strategies drawn from Black experience.
Sugarshack draws its title from an expression used by the artist’s father to describe abandoned or deteriorating buildings in his hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. A major Midwestern manufacturing and industrial hub, Waterloo became a destination for Black Americans leaving the segregated South during the Great Migration, many of them recruited by the railroad to break labor strikes. New arrivals were given train boxcars as temporary housing neighboring the train tracks on the east side of town before building their homes in the same area—the only part of the city open to them at the time under Waterloo’s restrictive housing covenants—many of which have now been abandoned.
DOKU: TRIAGE | LU YANG PRESENTS SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION
AT DRK KLINIKEN BERLIN WESTEND
Opening: September 11, 2026 | 6 – 10 PM
On View: September 12–20, 2026
As partner of Berlin Art Week 2026, DRK Kliniken Berlin Westend and KUNST IM WESTEND e.V. are delighted to present a site-specific installation by multimedia artist Lu Yang at the historic ‘Kochhaus’ of DRK Kliniken Berlin Westend. LU YANG | DOKU: TRIAGE stages an encounter between medicine, technology and Buddhist concepts of reincarnation, expanding Lu Yang’s renowned DOKU universe into an immersive spatial experience.
For Lu Yang, the hospital is not a neutral site: as a child, he frequently spent nights in emergency rooms. From a young age, he was repeatedly exposed to illness, death and the fragility of the body — experiences that became fundamental to his artistic practice. His work at the historic ‘Kochhaus’ of DRK Kliniken Berlin Westend was developed specifically for this setting and for the context of ‘art in hospitals’. An installation of hospital beds arranged throughout the main hall and large-scale banners suspended from the ceiling responds to the clinic context in a restrained, contemplative and yet direct manner, drawing on imagery from LuYang’s renowned series DOKU The Self and DOKU The Flow. Both works centre on Lu Yang’s genderless avatar DOKU. The name derives from the phrase “Dokusho Dokushi” — “We are born alone, and we die alone.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
Salim Green’s Sugarshack will be held at SOCIÉTÉ, and Lu Yang’s off-site presentation Doku: Triage will take place at DRK Kliniken Berlin Westend.
SOCIÉTÉ
Address
Wielandstraße 26
10707 Berlin
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 AM – 6 PM
Closed on Sundays and Mondays
DRK Kliniken Berlin Westend
Address
Historic Kochhaus
Spandauer Damm 130
(via entrance Fürstenbrunner Weg 12)
14050 Berlin
Opening Hours
Monday – Sunday | 11 AM – 6 PM
About Salim Green
Salim Green (b. 1996, Middletown, CT) earned a BA from Wesleyan University in 2020 and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2024. Green’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, New York; Société, Berlin; Josh Lilley, London; SculptureCenter, New York; Bellyman, Los Angeles; Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago; Fábrica, Mexico City. His work is included in the collections of the Getty Research Institute, The Kinsey Collection and the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. He lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Middletown, CT, where he is currently the Sullivan Fellow in Art at Wesleyan University. Sugarshack is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Europe, which will be followed by a residency at Callie’s, Berlin, in Fall 2026.
About Lu Yang
Lu Yang lives and works between Tokyo and Shanghai. His solo presentation DOKU The Illusion is currently on view at the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia. Current and recent shows include New Humans: Memories of the Future at New Museum, New York, a large-scale survey exhibition at Amant, New York, accompanied by a solo presentation at Museum of the Moving Image, New York. In 2022, Lu Yang was named ‘Artist of the Year’ by Deutsche Bank.
Lu Yang has held solo exhibitions at major international institutions including Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Kunsthalle Basel; Palais Populaire, Berlin; ARoS Museum, Aarhus; M Woods, Beijing; MOCA Cleveland; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Kunstpalais Erlangen. His work has been presented in significant group exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Metz; Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf; The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Times Square Arts, New York; CCA Tel Aviv; ICA, London; Muzeum Sztuki, Poland; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and Fridericianum, Kassel, among others.
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.
Image Credits:
1. Salim Green, Sugarshack, 2026 (Video still). Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin.
2. Lu Yang, DOKU The Flow, 2024 (film still). Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin.