The Berlin night is often not one of loneliness, but a state of wandering—a kind of ritual of turning inward. Every corner of the city carries the echo of sentences yet unspoken. Rasmus Eckhardt’s new exhibition NACHTSCHWÄRMEN at KÖNIG TELEGRAPHENAMT depicts precisely this rhythm of the night, its lightness, and the invisible weight it carries.
The Danish artist’s dual feeling toward Berlin—oscillating between foreignness and belonging—permeates all the works in the exhibition. Figures walking in the night; shadows that seem to approach someone only to drift away; familiar scents, half-finished sentences, evaporating dreams… Eckhardt’s paintings are like a visual choreography of getting lost and finding oneself again over the course of a single night.
Berlin: A Labyrinth, A Companion, A Space of Silence
In NACHTSCHWÄRMEN, Berlin is not merely a backdrop; it is a character.
The hazy lights of the streets, the dim yellow spilling from a window, weary sidewalks, the cold breath of the last night train…
Eckhardt’s figures walk, wait, get lost, and return within this city.
They cannot find the person they are seeking; yet they can sense their scent in the rooms, their footsteps in the side streets, their breath in the fog clouds.
It is as if love itself is a ghost wandering the city alongside them.
Scene Fragments Captured on the Threshold of Forgetting
Everyone who looks at Eckhardt’s works feels that thing:
“I remember this scene from somewhere.”
But from where?
The figures are neither fully awake nor completely in a dream.
They stand on that thin line where, in the deepest hours of the night, one feels both very close to and entirely distant from oneself.
Each scene:
the final second of a dream,
the unspoken side of a relationship,
the slight drunken resolve of a night,
a familiar trace appearing on a stranger’s face.
Eckhardt’s paintings are as blurred as recollection itself, yet as sharp as its emotion.
Technique: Pastel, Chalk, Sandpaper, and the Dust of Memory
The artist’s unique technique—the combined use of pastel, chalk, and sandpaper—turns the paintings into surfaces that almost breathe.
Soft lights leave the images suspended between dream and reality.
The friction created by sandpaper reveals the fragility of the scenes.
The color palette is like the tones not just of a night, but of a memory: deep blue, cigarette-smoke gray, street-lamp yellow, faded pink.
Every surface is an attempt at remembering, an endeavor to forget.
Love, the City, and the Silent Dialogue of Getting Lost
NACHTSCHWÄRMEN is an exhibition of searching.
But there is no finish line.
While inviting the viewer into this wander, Eckhardt offers no direction; just as Berlin does not.
Love is sometimes a face, sometimes a street light, sometimes a scent.
The artist seeks this emotional state not in the likeness of a person, but in the entirety of the city.
In the end, the exhibition leaves us with this feeling:
Every step taken into the night is actually a step toward ourselves.
Rasmus Eckhardt – NACHTSCHWÄRMEN
KÖNIG TELEGRAPHENAMT, Monbijoustrasse 13
Until January 17, 2026
