There are moments when you’ve just opened your eyes, yet the scent of the dream still lingers in the room. Your mind has not yet collided with the hard reality of the world; forms remain fluid, colors as fleeting as memories. Tanya Leighton, one of the pulsing arteries of Berlin’s art scene on Kurfürstenstraße, invites us to linger precisely at this threshold. Minami Kobayashi’s exhibition titled “Half Waking,” opening its doors on February 14, will momentarily disconnect no-26 readers from the city’s underground energy and place them gently among the elegant brushstrokes of a personal melancholy.
On this floor of our building, Berlin’s famous concrete gray softens on Kobayashi’s canvas into a veil of mist. Beginning with a preview on the evening of February 13, this journey is not merely an exhibition visit—it is also a return ticket to those “in-between moments” about ourselves that we have forgotten. If you, too, miss that magical emptiness between waking and not waking amid Berlin’s chaotic beauty, then this stop of our elevator is exactly for you.
Berlin Floor: The Art Labyrinth of Kurfürstenstraße
Since its founding in 2008, Tanya Leighton has been one of the most “intuitive” stops on the Berlin art scene. The gallery space at Kurfürstenstraße 24/25 hosts both rising talents and brings marginal figures into the center of contemporary discourse. Kobayashi’s exhibition aligns perfectly with the gallery’s mission of “re-contextualization.”
‘Half Waking’: The Permeability of Forms and Emotions
Minami Kobayashi’s artistic practice draws the viewer not as a voyeur, but as a confidant, into the fabric of the work. The title “Half Waking” offers the biggest clue to the content of the pieces:
Visual Language: Kobayashi’s figures seem to dissolve within the haze of morning drowsiness. Soft transitions replace sharp contours, reminiscent of the way Berlin’s winter sunlight falls into rooms.
Space and Memory: The interior settings in the works reflect the artist’s sense of “homelessness” or “multi-homeness” between Los Angeles and Berlin—that nomadic spirit so familiar to our building.
Atlas of Emotion: Rather than a display of technical virtuosity, the exhibition is an analysis of emotional states. After the intense pressure of our boiler room, this floor allows for a deep breath.
Boiler Room and Attic Influence
The “half-waking” state on Kobayashi’s canvases is as mesmerizing as a slow-motion scene in a film. The “emotion and affect analysis” we so often discuss in the boiler room is carried out here not with pixels, but with pigment. If this exhibition were a book, it would likely sit in the attic library next to a Virginia Woolf novel written in stream-of-consciousness technique.
“Waking is not merely a state, but a thin veil drawn over reality. Instead of lifting that veil, Kobayashi prefers to let us observe the patterns on its surface.”
Exhibition Dates: February 14 – April 11, 2026
Preview: Friday, February 13, 18:00 – 20:00
Location: Kurfürstenstraße 24/25, 10785 Berlin
