An Aesthetic Inquiry at the Heart of Berlin: Georg Herold and the Irony of Material

While walking along Berlin’s wide and imposing Karl-Marx-Allee, the window of Capitain Petzel always invites you to pause. But this time, the atmosphere inside is charged with a mischievous challenge that reaches far beyond conventional aesthetic concerns—straight to the origins of material and value. With his solo exhibition titled “Georg Herold f.”, Georg Herold demolishes the art world’s beloved notion of sublimity using nothing more than a simple roof batten. In Berlin’s grey yet intellectually rich atmosphere, Herold’s practice—stretching from the 1980s to the present—feels like notches carved into the building’s main load-bearing columns. The air on this floor is particularly appetising for those interested not only in what art is, but in what it is made of. Open since 27 February and running until 11 April 2026, this exhibition takes the viewer on an elegant journey between art theft, the texture of caviar, and the uncertainty of quantum physics. Why should you see this exhibition? Because Herold reminds us that art is sometimes simply “what we see,” and that searching for a mystical secret behind it often distances us from reality.

The Skeleton of Art: Kunstraub and the Language of Roof Battens

To understand the foundation of Georg Herold’s artistic practice, one must return to 1985 and his “Kunstraub” (Art Theft) series. Revived on the walls of Capitain Petzel, these works force us to question “at what cost” art is produced. Rough, crudely nailed roof battens with black fabric panels stretched haphazardly across them… Here, Herold nails—literally with the nails in his hand—the Suprematists’ famous quest for transcendence to the wall.

In “Kunstraub II” especially, we see him fulfilling his teacher Sigmar Polke’s instruction—“Higher beings commanded: Paint the upper right corner black!”—with student-like discipline but enormous irony. These works turn the intellectual history of modern art into a playground. Walking through this room of the apartment, you cannot help but ask: “Where is the art hidden?” In front of the canvas? Behind it? Or in the empty space between those battens? Herold’s answer is clear: nowhere and everywhere.

Caviar and the Ordinariness of Value: Luxury Descends onto Canvas

Smoke rises from the boiler room; this time, the source is caviar—the utmost extreme of luxury consumption. Since the late 1980s, Herold has used caviar not merely as a “symbol of wealth,” but as a unique painting medium. Mixed with acrylic and lacquer, these black pearls glisten with mother-of-pearl, creating a texture and contour on the canvas that no brush could ever achieve.

The caviar paintings mock the absurd relationship between the market value of art and the material value of what is used to make it. In these compositions—where the artist meticulously counts and numbers each caviar bead—they float across the canvas like codes or numerological experiments. What confronts us is something both extraordinarily precious and profoundly organic and ephemeral. By treating caviar as a form of currency, Herold playfully trips up the art world’s systems of value measurement.

The Uncertainty Principle: Particle or Wave?

In the final layers of the exhibition, we encounter the famous uncertainty principle of quantum physics. Georg Herold’s works exist in constant state change, much like subatomic particles in the quantum world. An object that appears for a moment as crude building material can, the next moment, transform into a biomorphic structure or— as in The Accuser—a figurative representation.

This mutability invites the viewer to abandon the effort to find a fixed meaning. Just as a particle in the quantum realm can be both here and there, there is no absolute reality in Herold’s paintings. In his new works from 2026, the caviar textures and lacquer surfaces leave us oscillating between seeing, reading, and feeling. In this modern corner of Berlin, the quiet irony echoing on the walls of Capitain Petzel tells us that the greatest power of art lies in its ability to carry uncertainty.

Exhibition Information:

Artist: Georg Herold

Venue: Capitain Petzel, Karl-Marx-Allee 45, Berlin

Dates: 27 February – 11 April 2026

Visiting Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 – 18:00