The Mysticism of Touch and the Architecture of Space: Leiko Ikemura and Walter Pichler at Berlin CFA

Moving beyond visual perception to wander along that twilight border of the senses nourishes our mind not only with what the eye sees, but with an enchanting synesthesia created by scent, sound, and touch. Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA) in Berlin invites us to precisely this deep sensory and spatial inquiry with two simultaneous exhibitions running from September 11 to October 24, 2026.

Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura’s selection titled “de sensu”—meaning “through the senses” in Latin—opens a vast universe of imagination that stretches the rigid boundaries of our perception. Deep green tones enveloping the gallery walls evoke that hesitant, liminal moment of transition from day to night, while figures such as Green Baby, Green Mom, and Dear Spirit spread throughout the space like spiritual guardians. From Ikemura’s legendary Usagi (rabbit-woman) motifs symbolizing fragility and resilience since the Fukushima disaster to her Milk Lady sculpture absorbing and transforming vital energy, each work blends East Asia’s traditional Sansuiga landscape aesthetic with Western Surrealism to an exceptionally refined degree.

Passing from Ikemura’s fluid and dreamlike world into the other wing of the gallery, we encounter the archetypal realm between architecture and sculpture of Walter Pichler, one of modern art history’s most radical and reclusive figures. Curated by the artist’s daughter and close confidante Anna Tripamer, the exhibition “Zeichnungen & Skulpturen” brings to Berlin the spirit of that legendary universe Pichler built from earth, clay, wood, and lead after retreating to the village of St. Martin in the Austrian countryside in the 1970s. Having rejected the noise of the metropolis following his utopian future designs of the 1960s and MoMA exhibitions, Pichler built a dedicated “house” for every single sculpture he created, rendering space and artwork an inseparable mass. Meticulously avoiding selling his works, the artist’s timeless sculptures such as Doppelkopf and Der rote Stab, along with his passionately drawn sketches, give voice to the ancient memory of wood and mud on the gallery walls with a stirring poetics.

Opening their doors with a joint inauguration on the evening of Thursday, September 10, as part of Berlin Art Week, these two special selections promise an unmissable aesthetic feast for those who wish to feel under the very same roof the fluid senses of body and soul on one hand, and a monumental solitude born of stone and earth on the other.

Exhibition Note from NO-26 Editor

Venue: Contemporary Fine Arts (Berlin, Germany)

Dates: September 11 – October 24, 2026 (Opening: Thursday, September 10, 18:00 – 22:00)

Exhibitions: Leiko Ikemura (“de sensu”) & Walter Pichler (“Zeichnungen & Skulpturen”)

Aura: The most captivating dual exhibition experience of the Berlin season, bringing together Leiko Ikemura’s green-hued sensory and spiritual imagination with Walter Pichler’s archetypal world uniting sculpture and architecture into a single body in the Austrian countryside.