Galerie Max Hetzler invites us to “On Paper,” an exhibition that proves paper is not merely a passive surface for writing or drawing, but a space of experiment and resistance in its own right. On the Berlin floor of Apartment No:26 this time, our table is covered not with digital screens but with fibrous, textured sheets—sometimes fragile, always holding time. Running until March 7, 2026, this third edition builds a vast intergenerational bridge, demonstrating why paper remains at the heart of artistic innovation, critical thought, and material discovery.
Speed and Precision: The Dance of Gesture on Paper
The exhibition celebrates the unique immediacy paper offers and the material’s responsiveness in the artist’s hand. Katharina Grosse’s prismatic color distributions and Eddie Martinez’s instinctive, automatic lines keep pace with paper’s speed, while Bridget Riley’s geometric investigations and Günther Förg’s sixteen-part acrylic composition from 1992 (from his “Farbfeld” series) show how this medium can become a rigorous laboratory of planning. Förg’s works stand as proof of how far monochromatic abstraction can deepen on paper.
Identity, Memory, and Bodily Traces
In this exhibition, paper appears not only as a surface but as a vessel of memory. Vivien Zhang draws on a wide visual pool—from migrating butterflies to world-map projections—to weave themes of diaspora and identity into the fibers of the paper. Giulia Andreani revives history and memory in her portraits using her signature Payne’s grey tones, while Victor Man’s recurring, scratched-in charcoal skull motif serves as a classic memento mori, reminding us of our mortality.
Grace Weaver and Louise Bonnet’s female figures find bodily resonance in the intimate space paper provides. The material’s soft yet resilient quality shelters every kind of gesture—from figuration to abstraction—like a sanctuary.
Archival Fairy Tale: Fictional Biographies
One of paper’s greatest strengths is its capacity to store, distort, and reconstruct narratives. Rinus Van de Velde constructs fictional biographies on paper, while Glenn Brown deforms art-historical sources to intertwine past and present stories. Walton Ford’s luminous watercolors merge historical facts with fantastical imagination on the surface. KAWS’s iconic CHUM character, standing amid a classic landscape with cracked stones and distant trees in a mixture of surrender and resolve, proves how paper can carry both popular culture and classical aesthetics at once.
Materiality and Ecology: Paper’s Organic Roots
In the final layer of the exhibition, we return to paper’s organic origins—that sedimentary substance that is part of our environment. Ida Ekblad, Janaina Tschäpe, and Jake Longstreth’s sun-drenched landscapes place paper directly within the ecology of matter. Jeremy Demester’s use of earth pigments to transform everyday intimate moments into painted terrains highlights paper’s genetic bond with natural topographies. Tal R’s enormous fruit bowls from his “Domestics” series make paper the liveliest witness to daily life and domestic space.
Exhibition Information
Exhibition: On Paper (Group Show)
Venue: Galerie Max Hetzler, Goethestraße 2/3, Berlin
Dates: Until March 7, 2026
Featured Artists: Katharina Grosse, Bridget Riley, KAWS, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, Matthew Barney, and others.
Before leaving this floor of Apartment No:26, linger among these paper landscapes. The infinite flexibility of paper promises a quiet resistance to the noise of the world, reminding us that even the most fragile surface can hold entire universes.
