A book’s cover, preface, footnotes, or that small exhibition label attached beside a painting… All these secondary elements that surround the main text or image, quietly whispering how it should be read yet often remaining in the background, are termed “paratext.” The KOW gallery in Berlin brings precisely these invisible frames and guiding layers into focus with a group exhibition titled “Paratext,” on view through September 26, 2026.
Bringing together works by Heinrich Dunst, Sophia Eisenhut, and Simon Lehner, the selection demonstrates that no image exists in isolation, but always gains meaning through the surrounding secondary narratives, technical protocols, and modes of presentation. Upon stepping into the gallery, Simon Lehner’s Auto–Icon series and his work Room I, which focuses on radicalization research, lay bare the ambiguous boundaries between personal memory, digital representation, and social constructs. Heinrich Dunst’s minimalist approach deconstructing the relationship between language and visual form, alongside Sophia Eisenhut’s conceptual touches, allows the works in the exhibition to transform into living footnotes in constant dialogue with one another.
Prompting viewers to question not so much what art shows, but through which linguistic and spatial tools that shown subject is served, this exhibition also sets the stage for a special gathering as part of Berlin Art Week and Gallery Night. Taking place on the evening of Thursday, September 10 at 19:00 with artists Sophia Eisenhut and Heinrich Dunst, the exhibition tour stands as one of September’s highest-quality stops for those who wish to hear the conceptual mechanisms behind the works directly from their creators.
