In his new exhibition “Ätschi Bätsch”, Berlin-based artist Björn Heyn playfully sticks his tongue out at the audience. At first glance, his paintings appear playful, childlike, and fun, but on closer inspection, they reveal themselves as a rather complex game with layers of reality and illusion. Floral and fruit still lifes from classical art history collide with seemingly naïve forms of expression. The pleasure lies not only in this civil disobedience of mixing high and low culture; the “fun factor” unfolds as a veritable mental puzzle.

Flowers in vases and fruit in bowls on tables—this is the quintessential classical still life, familiar from centuries of art history. It continues to live on in countless décor tips and interior design ideas. And then there’s the table with chairs, another theme almost as old as humanity itself. We flood the various networks with recipes, social cooking events, and endless cooking shows. We invoke community, sociability, and coziness. Food truly seems important.

In Heyn’s paintings, the beauty of still lifes and the laid table meet an unbridled love of colors and patterns, surfaces and forms, through which he reformulates the order of things in an immediate way. Like children, he places objects in front of, beside, and on top of each other without regard for three-dimensional spatial logic. Tables and chairs appear—such as in “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”—strictly from the side or, at best, like the table in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5” or the blue chair in “kann ich den, bitte?”, represented with receding perspective lines or viewed slightly from above, but never accurately in perspective; instead, they are awkwardly arranged within the plane. The round table in “weniger ist mehr” is given four peculiarly positioned legs in the manner of children’s drawings.

Heyn often places images within his images as distinguishable layers, such as the blue table with chairs on a red background in the upper right quadrant of “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”, or the pink-red floral painting with blue blossoms in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5”. However, the flower stems grow from the table in front of the painting, and the blossoms extend beyond the picture plane, their edges supplemented with colored pencil on the bare, transparently primed canvas. So what belongs to the picture within the picture, and what to the painting itself, which depicts a space with a floral painting, a table, and a spherical vase figure in front of it?

Heyn intensifies this play with reality and illusion by incorporating collage elements. For example, the dish towel on the table in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5” is a real piece that he glued in, while the vase figure is fully cut out, not merely the upper round form as it might appear—white with colored pencil scribbles, giving it a paper-like look. A piece of cord or cable in three loops in front of the table is painted with a slight shadow, creating the illusion of being physically attached.

Similarly, the blue thermos and three fruits on the table in “19:00 fünf Personen” are not glued but illusionistically painted, as are the peas on the dish towel mini-series “Lappen 1”, “Lappen 2”, and “Lappen 3”. In “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”, Heyn pays a direct homage to Baroque still lifes with a half-peeled lemon: the peel often curls over the edge of a bowl or table, creating the plastic effect of deep spatial layering, which Heyn subverts through the flat arrangement of the otherwise three-dimensional furniture and objects.

Baroque still lifes compete with reality through painterly translation of materials and textures, where spatial order and representation are crucial both for composition and symbolic meaning. A table, for instance, is not just a surface but also a spatial arrangement, and placing it correctly in perspective can be challenging—even for children. Their artistic appropriation of reality is inaccurate, clumsy, and awkward, yet convincingly immediate in expressing their own, not yet civilized, “adult” understanding of the world. Early modern artists similarly drew inspiration from so-called “naïve art”—from children, non-European cultures, or psychiatric patients—to reformulate their own evolving relationship with the world.

Björn Heyn follows a similar path. To preserve a spontaneous access to the order of things, to see the world anew and unfiltered, he begins with random placements and develops the work in many layers. Often, elements from the initial layers remain in the finished painting, the lowest layer becoming the topmost. To recapture elementary forms of expression akin to children’s, he modifies his painting or drawing tools with chunky blocks, mounts them on unwieldy rods, or even attempts to paint and draw with his feet.

When Heyn presents the laid table with chairs and still lifes of flowers and fruit seemingly naïvely, he touches on solutions that modern art has also explored: embracing rather than overcoming the gap between the two-dimensional surface and three-dimensional reality; transitioning from representational forms to ornamental patterns; and freeing painting and drawing techniques from the obligation to depict any form of reality.

Whether viewed from the perspective of art history, the experience of children’s art, or approached rationally or intuitively, Björn Heyn’s complex interplay of reality and illusion provides immense pleasure on all levels, stimulating not only the senses but also the intellect.

© Veronika Schöne 2026

In his new exhibition “Ätschi Bätsch”, Berlin-based artist Björn Heyn playfully sticks his tongue out at the audience. At first glance, his paintings appear playful, childlike, and fun, but on closer inspection, they reveal themselves as a rather complex game with layers of reality and illusion. Floral and fruit still lifes from classical art history collide with seemingly naïve forms of expression. The pleasure lies not only in this civil disobedience of mixing high and low culture; the “fun factor” unfolds as a veritable mental puzzle.

Flowers in vases and fruit in bowls on tables—this is the quintessential classical still life, familiar from centuries of art history. It continues to live on in countless décor tips and interior design ideas. And then there’s the table with chairs, another theme almost as old as humanity itself. We flood the various networks with recipes, social cooking events, and endless cooking shows. We invoke community, sociability, and coziness. Food truly seems important.

In Heyn’s paintings, the beauty of still lifes and the laid table meet an unbridled love of colors and patterns, surfaces and forms, through which he reformulates the order of things in an immediate way. Like children, he places objects in front of, beside, and on top of each other without regard for three-dimensional spatial logic. Tables and chairs appear—such as in “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”—strictly from the side or, at best, like the table in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5” or the blue chair in “kann ich den, bitte?”, represented with receding perspective lines or viewed slightly from above, but never accurately in perspective; instead, they are awkwardly arranged within the plane. The round table in “weniger ist mehr” is given four peculiarly positioned legs in the manner of children’s drawings.

Heyn often places images within his images as distinguishable layers, such as the blue table with chairs on a red background in the upper right quadrant of “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”, or the pink-red floral painting with blue blossoms in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5”. However, the flower stems grow from the table in front of the painting, and the blossoms extend beyond the picture plane, their edges supplemented with colored pencil on the bare, transparently primed canvas. So what belongs to the picture within the picture, and what to the painting itself, which depicts a space with a floral painting, a table, and a spherical vase figure in front of it?

Heyn intensifies this play with reality and illusion by incorporating collage elements. For example, the dish towel on the table in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5” is a real piece that he glued in, while the vase figure is fully cut out, not merely the upper round form as it might appear—white with colored pencil scribbles, giving it a paper-like look. A piece of cord or cable in three loops in front of the table is painted with a slight shadow, creating the illusion of being physically attached.

Similarly, the blue thermos and three fruits on the table in “19:00 fünf Personen” are not glued but illusionistically painted, as are the peas on the dish towel mini-series “Lappen 1”, “Lappen 2”, and “Lappen 3”. In “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”, Heyn pays a direct homage to Baroque still lifes with a half-peeled lemon: the peel often curls over the edge of a bowl or table, creating the plastic effect of deep spatial layering, which Heyn subverts through the flat arrangement of the otherwise three-dimensional furniture and objects.

Baroque still lifes compete with reality through painterly translation of materials and textures, where spatial order and representation are crucial both for composition and symbolic meaning. A table, for instance, is not just a surface but also a spatial arrangement, and placing it correctly in perspective can be challenging—even for children. Their artistic appropriation of reality is inaccurate, clumsy, and awkward, yet convincingly immediate in expressing their own, not yet civilized, “adult” understanding of the world. Early modern artists similarly drew inspiration from so-called “naïve art”—from children, non-European cultures, or psychiatric patients—to reformulate their own evolving relationship with the world.

Björn Heyn follows a similar path. To preserve a spontaneous access to the order of things, to see the world anew and unfiltered, he begins with random placements and develops the work in many layers. Often, elements from the initial layers remain in the finished painting, the lowest layer becoming the topmost. To recapture elementary forms of expression akin to children’s, he modifies his painting or drawing tools with chunky blocks, mounts them on unwieldy rods, or even attempts to paint and draw with his feet.

When Heyn presents the laid table with chairs and still lifes of flowers and fruit seemingly naïvely, he touches on solutions that modern art has also explored: embracing rather than overcoming the gap between the two-dimensional surface and three-dimensional reality; transitioning from representational forms to ornamental patterns; and freeing painting and drawing techniques from the obligation to depict any form of reality.

Whether viewed from the perspective of art history, the experience of children’s art, or approached rationally or intuitively, Björn Heyn’s complex interplay of reality and illusion provides immense pleasure on all levels, stimulating not only the senses but also the intellect.

© Veronika Schöne 2026

In his new exhibition “Ätschi Bätsch”, Berlin-based artist Björn Heyn playfully sticks his tongue out at the audience. At first glance, his paintings appear playful, childlike, and fun, but on closer inspection, they reveal themselves as a rather complex game with layers of reality and illusion. Floral and fruit still lifes from classical art history collide with seemingly naïve forms of expression. The pleasure lies not only in this civil disobedience of mixing high and low culture; the “fun factor” unfolds as a veritable mental puzzle.

Flowers in vases and fruit in bowls on tables—this is the quintessential classical still life, familiar from centuries of art history. It continues to live on in countless décor tips and interior design ideas. And then there’s the table with chairs, another theme almost as old as humanity itself. We flood the various networks with recipes, social cooking events, and endless cooking shows. We invoke community, sociability, and coziness. Food truly seems important.

In Heyn’s paintings, the beauty of still lifes and the laid table meet an unbridled love of colors and patterns, surfaces and forms, through which he reformulates the order of things in an immediate way. Like children, he places objects in front of, beside, and on top of each other without regard for three-dimensional spatial logic. Tables and chairs appear—such as in “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”—strictly from the side or, at best, like the table in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5” or the blue chair in “kann ich den, bitte?”, represented with receding perspective lines or viewed slightly from above, but never accurately in perspective; instead, they are awkwardly arranged within the plane. The round table in “weniger ist mehr” is given four peculiarly positioned legs in the manner of children’s drawings.

Heyn often places images within his images as distinguishable layers, such as the blue table with chairs on a red background in the upper right quadrant of “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”, or the pink-red floral painting with blue blossoms in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5”. However, the flower stems grow from the table in front of the painting, and the blossoms extend beyond the picture plane, their edges supplemented with colored pencil on the bare, transparently primed canvas. So what belongs to the picture within the picture, and what to the painting itself, which depicts a space with a floral painting, a table, and a spherical vase figure in front of it?

Heyn intensifies this play with reality and illusion by incorporating collage elements. For example, the dish towel on the table in “manchmal male ich einfach Blumen 5” is a real piece that he glued in, while the vase figure is fully cut out, not merely the upper round form as it might appear—white with colored pencil scribbles, giving it a paper-like look. A piece of cord or cable in three loops in front of the table is painted with a slight shadow, creating the illusion of being physically attached.

Similarly, the blue thermos and three fruits on the table in “19:00 fünf Personen” are not glued but illusionistically painted, as are the peas on the dish towel mini-series “Lappen 1”, “Lappen 2”, and “Lappen 3”. In “wir nehmen gerne noch ein paar Oliven”, Heyn pays a direct homage to Baroque still lifes with a half-peeled lemon: the peel often curls over the edge of a bowl or table, creating the plastic effect of deep spatial layering, which Heyn subverts through the flat arrangement of the otherwise three-dimensional furniture and objects.

Baroque still lifes compete with reality through painterly translation of materials and textures, where spatial order and representation are crucial both for composition and symbolic meaning. A table, for instance, is not just a surface but also a spatial arrangement, and placing it correctly in perspective can be challenging—even for children. Their artistic appropriation of reality is inaccurate, clumsy, and awkward, yet convincingly immediate in expressing their own, not yet civilized, “adult” understanding of the world. Early modern artists similarly drew inspiration from so-called “naïve art”—from children, non-European cultures, or psychiatric patients—to reformulate their own evolving relationship with the world.

Björn Heyn follows a similar path. To preserve a spontaneous access to the order of things, to see the world anew and unfiltered, he begins with random placements and develops the work in many layers. Often, elements from the initial layers remain in the finished painting, the lowest layer becoming the topmost. To recapture elementary forms of expression akin to children’s, he modifies his painting or drawing tools with chunky blocks, mounts them on unwieldy rods, or even attempts to paint and draw with his feet.

When Heyn presents the laid table with chairs and still lifes of flowers and fruit seemingly naïvely, he touches on solutions that modern art has also explored: embracing rather than overcoming the gap between the two-dimensional surface and three-dimensional reality; transitioning from representational forms to ornamental patterns; and freeing painting and drawing techniques from the obligation to depict any form of reality.

Whether viewed from the perspective of art history, the experience of children’s art, or approached rationally or intuitively, Björn Heyn’s complex interplay of reality and illusion provides immense pleasure on all levels, stimulating not only the senses but also the intellect.

© Veronika Schöne 2026

In a now well-known interview, Gerhard Richter once reacted quite indignantly to the question of what he thinks about while painting. His argument: thinking is painting. In Kevin Lüdicke’s work, precisely this inseparability can be vividly observed—not only in his handling of format, support, and composition, but even prior to painting itself: in his ballpoint pen drawings. Created while on the move—in the park, after work, on vacation, never in the studio—and always in the same small Polaroid format, they are not preparatory sketches or compositional studies, but rather mental-emotional preliminaries. A kind of: Paratext.¹

In his second solo exhibition at Galerie Gegen & Lücke, Lüdicke brings together drawing, painting, and sculpture/installation into a constellation that bridges longing, drive, and habit. For the first time in Lüdicke’s practice, the human body appears as both object and counterpart. This occurs in the paintings as well as in the eponymous sculpture: a diver—in his posture an inverted cross—becomes a fountain. The sacred negation is as palpable as the promise inherent in the figure: the leap as longing, flight as a state between control and surrender. A distinctly contemporary mode, dissolved in the lightness of the humorous fountain adaptation.²

In the paintings, we encounter a multitude of references—for example, the black-and-white zigzag floor from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks or the Ouroboros figure in the form of a serpent belt. The works also refer to one another: geometric forms migrate from one painting to the next, where they become an awning in front of a naked torso. Surrealism meets Constructivism, and the principle of collage encounters a liberated compositional logic. “The great enigma” that painting represents for Lüdicke himself becomes visible—and productive—in these works.

Yet all this productivity exists under the overarching uncertainty of life: death. This greatest of all ambiguities finds form particularly in Lüdicke’s Algae Bouquet (2026). Flower still lifes stand within the art-historical tradition of memento mori, a reminder of death as a spur to the will to live. Lüdicke sharpens this symbolism and translates it into a present afflicted by the climate crisis: algae as a future alternative source of human nourishment, presented as ornamental flowers in a vase, yet at the same time floating on water, leading the viewer to assume they are being kept alive. It is these work-immanent rotations of reflection that make engaging with Lüdicke’s works so extraordinarily rewarding.

Text: Marcus Boxler

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1 While Gérard Genette still understood the “paratext” as “that accessory through which a text becomes a book and as such [...] comes before the public,” media studies have since detached this concept from structuralist literary theory and expanded it to other textual contexts: cinema, series, music albums, exhibitions. In Kevin Lüdicke’s work, the concept of the paratext materialises as a fundamental way of thinking and working with motifs, composition, and medium. It is therefore only fitting that the exhibition’s invitation card appears in the same format as the drawings: as a Polaroid photograph.

2 It should not go unmentioned here that flowing water and fountains carry profound significance, especially in Christian symbolism: Jacob’s Well, baptism, canthari in the atriums of early Christian basilicas, fons vitae, and so on.

"LOOKS PERFECT ME"

23.01 - 07.03.2026

Galerie Gegen & Lücke

"LOOKS PERFECT ME"

23.01 - 07.03.2026

Galerie Gegen & Lücke