In the dignified silence along Cologne’s Rhine River banks, a different kind of lightness is seeping in this spring. As you walk the corridors of Apartment No:26, sometimes you hear the faint rustle of paper slipping under a door; that very sound leads us to Galerie Christian Lethert’s white walls, where we meet the American artist Jill Baroff. Starting March 6, Baroff carries the soul of paper straight into the heart of Cologne. Her experiments on the famous Japanese Gampi paper—filtered through her stays in Japan—are not mere drawings; they are poetic minimalist objects suspended within space and time. If you are among those who long for the immense power of “less” amid life’s chaos, the calm of this floor is exactly for you.
In Baroff’s works there exists a magnificent balance between the unpredictable nature of chance and the rational discipline of order. Gampi paper, with its almost ethereal thinness, resembles a layer of mist floating in mid-air, while the artist’s profound respect for the material is felt in every touch. These pieces are like the faint yet resolute daylight that falls into our building’s attic: a grace that does not interfere, yet makes everything visible. Through her site-specific installations, Baroff invites the viewer not merely to look, but to breathe within the fragile yet resilient world of paper. This approach, which dismantles traditional drawing conventions, brings with it a surprising sense of freedom and the lightness of materiality.
This exhibition at Galerie Christian Lethert is poised to become one of the most peaceful stops on Cologne’s art route until April 24, 2026. The visual world Jill Baroff presents actually shows us how a single sheet of paper can construct an entire universe—far beyond grand buildings or monumental structures. Before leaving this floor of our apartment, allow yourself to get lost for a while in the living pictorial voids Baroff has created. Remember: truth is sometimes hidden in the thinnest textures, in the quietest moments.
