In the 1980s, Walter Dahn first gained recognition in Cologne as a pioneer of the “Bad” Painting movement and as a founding member of the Mülheimer Freiheit, a group of neo-expressionist artists known for their rebellious, punk-inflected attitude. During this period, Dahn’s practice centred on a critical reassessment of painting as a medium. Incorporating references to contemporary music and popular culture, his works evoke a broad array of associations, prompting existential and historical questions that aim at deconstructing the visual ideologies of everyday life. Sprüth Magers is pleased to present a survey exhibition of Dahn’s work on the occasion of Berlin Art Week, marking the first show since his passing in 2024.

Jean-Luc Mylayne has devoted his life to philosophical questions about our place on Earth—questions for which birds and their natural habitats serve as both subject and symbol, and through which he probes what it means to be human alongside nature. Made in close collaboration with his life partner, Mylène, each photograph is the result of months of patient work, a sustained investigation into temporality, perception and community. Sprüth Magers is pleased to present Reflection, a solo exhibition of Mylayne’s work, on the occasion of Berlin Art Week. The majority of the images on view were conceived during a residency in Marfa, Texas, where Mylayne was drawn to the intense shades of blue found in the water and sky, and sometimes in the birds themselves. Reflection, the title of this exhibition, speaks to the contemplation that Mylayne’s work invites, centred around the question how human beings might truly coexist with the natural world.

Martine Syms is one of the defining voices of her generation. She is an artist and director whose practice spans cinema, art and theatre. On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Sprüth Magers is pleased to present Dominica Publishing, a temporary boutique.  

The idea of the shop, desire as performance, and the performance of desire have long occupied Syms’ practice. This thread traces back to Golden Age, a Chicago bookshop and project space she ran for five years, platforming international artists, including Jon Rafman’s first solo exhibition. This impulse also found expression in her 2024 exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, a multimedia project that functioned simultaneously as artwork and concept store. Dominica Publishing began as an imprint dedicated to exploring Blackness “as a topic, reference, marker, and audience in visual culture”, which remains central to her ongoing inquiry.  

Presented in the Window, the gallery’s street-facing exhibition space, Dominica Publishing brings together artwork, merchandise—including new designs—and a selection of Syms’ publications. All available for purchase.

Thomas Demand is known for his photographs of meticulous paper models that reconstruct scenes charged with historical, political and cultural significance, as well as everyday moments. On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Demand. In 2025, Demand began working with a new technique, creating smaller-scale images printed on copper. The material has deep roots in art history: used as a “canvas” during the Renaissance, it later served as the support for some of the earliest photographs printed on silver-plated copper sheets, extending its significance into the history of photography.

The work of Robert Elfgen explores the relationship between humankind and nature through a distinctly mythical, poetic lens. His assemblages, collages, light objects, and floor- and wall pieces are often arranged in room-filling installations that resemble walk-in paintings. On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Sprüth Magers is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new and recent works by Elfgen.

Since the early 1990s, Andrea Zittel has used the arena of day-to-day life to develop and test prototypes for living structures and situations in order to understand the world at large. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, on the occasion of Berlin Art Week, are pleased to announce a solo exhibition of the artist’s latest project, The Public Performance of the Self. Zittel’s newest work hinges on the dual meaning of the term ‘to perform’, which signifies both to conduct an action and to present oneself to an audience. Zittel ‘performs herself’, participating in the various activities of everyday life in the public realm while documenting with a phone camera and written reports. With subtle dry humour, Zittel touches on both personal and universal themes – mental well-being, social roles, online culture, and her own art-making – engaging with the enduring question of how we craft and present ourselves to others.

Henni Alftan’s artistic practice is grounded in a profound exploration of the medium of painting, examining its methods and histories. Her intimately familiar yet intriguingly enigmatic portrayals of everyday life arise from a process of observation and deduction, resulting in precise and carefully cropped figurative works that embody a studied economy of means. By skillfully employing scale, perspective and texture, Alftan reveals the strangeness of the ordinary. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo show during Berlin Art Week, featuring all-new paintings and the artist’s first-ever presentation of drawings.

Drawn from disused remnants of the airline industry, the sculptures of Michail Pirgelis both reinvigorate and challenge the conventions of post-minimalism, the readymade and conceptual art. Aluminum panels, cut from decommissioned planes in so-called “aircraft boneyards,” carry the marks of rivets and colorful logos, as well as those of weather and time, imbuing them with a painterly, gestural character and a unique aura of history. Seven Springs presents a new group of wall-based works that feature stripes and other flag-like elements. Together with a wallpaper installation – a recent extension of the artist’s practice – they highlight Pirgelis’ relentless synthesis of painting, sculpture and environment.

Lucy Dodd’s new paintings mobilise material, colour and shape to explore both personal and universal roots and ruptures. The two-part exhibition In Between Worlds reflects Dodd’s recent move from upstate New York to the Scottish countryside. It features paintings and found sculpture that examine the mythological and historical ties between the two places. Using unconventional pigments derived from nature and her immediate surroundings, Dodd traces the passage of time and an energetic shift that is echoed in the colours and spirit of the frenetic, at times large-scale, landscapes composed of painted spills, drops and stains. Working outdoors during the American autumn and later in the Scottish spring, the artist produced two cathartic groups of works that are a true display of place, time and setting. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present the latter part of the cycle of works at the Berlin gallery. The solo show The Return: Works from the North Sea follows its counterpart, The End, staged at The Ranch, Montauk, from November 9 to December 20, 2024.

The late Otto Piene, a founding member of the influential postwar art collective ZERO, consistently explored evolving notions of the material and immaterial in his work. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo exhibition at the Berlin gallery that showcases a selection of Piene’s Fire Paintings alongside his final ceramic works. Both bodies of work explore the element of fire and its creative potential, which the artist began experimenting with as early as 1959 and continued throughout his entire career.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present Thomas Scheibitz’s solo exhibition WÜSTE—DSCHUNGEL / Omega UND Tunnel at their Berlin gallery. Thomas Scheibitz’s paintings and sculptures represent a continuous exploration of the visual translation of complex thoughts and social models, which are transformed into multilayered, often fragmented pictorial structures – structures that are simultaneously open and in a perpetual state of flux. From his earliest to his most recent works, Scheibitz simultaneously solves and dissolves everything. These works symbolize the act of encoding and decoding and allude to one of the artist’s main themes: mapping, measuring, penetrating, and exploring a pictorial inventory. This is a difficult territory to explore, a journey between contradictions and extremely varied regions.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present the second iteration of Ahmedabad 1992, a solo exhibition of an alluring series of mixed media assemblages Baldessari produced during his residency in India. For the first time in decades, a selection from this unique period in the artist’s oeuvre was initially shown during summer 2024 at the London gallery, and on the occasion of Berlin Art Week, Ahmedabad 1992 will travel to the gallery’s Berlin space.

The mystical scenes of painter Oliver Bak unite the spirits of the past and present. Drawing from fiction and the real, mythology and life, and the tangible and the subconscious, he constructs enigmatic narratives by conflating different fragments of reality. Bak’s pictorial worlds are propelled by constant synthesis and anchored in a deep understanding of the medium’s history. His mottled brushwork and magnetic use of colour evoke the dreamlike works of Symbolist, Surrealist and Nabi painters. Plants seem to sprout from the surface of his canvases and empyrean figures emerge from between leafy areas and flecks of light, breaking down spatial categories. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Bak’s first exhibition at the Berlin gallery, marking the Danish artist’s debut show in Germany.

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin 2024, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present territory, a group show of works by Mire Lee, Liu Yujia, Gala Porras-Kim, Tan Jing, and Zhang Ruyi, curated by Shi-ne Oh. It will be Sprüth Magers’ first group exhibition focusing exclusively on female Asian artists. The title, territory, naturally associated with aggressive political policies and behaviours, questions the vast definitions of borders and boundaries and how they both limit and liberate our transgressive desires on physical as well as psychological terrain.

ÉGOÏSTE. Thirteen bright neon works that read the French word are mounted at different heights on the walls of the gallery’s storefront exhibition space. The sunken and high-ceilinged room with its large display windows allows visitors to view Sylvie Fleury’s installation from the street.

The work of Richard Artschwager has always defied categories and continues to be marked by a spirit of nonconformity. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present Cornered, a solo exhibition of Artschwager’s work at the Berlin gallery in honor of the artist’s centennial.

Sprüth Magers is pleased to present beach paintings by Karen Kilimnik for a winter escape.

John Bocks Werke sind Material- und Sprachexperimente, die klare Gattungs- und Werkbegriffe entgrenzen. Seine Einzelausstellung verwandelt den Galerieraum in einen für Bock charakteristischen künstlerischen Kosmos und präsentiert erstmalig seinen neuen Film sowie mehrere neue Objekte und eine Installation.

An alluring and extramundane blue light emanates from the "Window", Sprüth Magers’ Berlin storefront exhibition space. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce a solo exhibition by the artist, showcasing five pieces from her enticing series alongside a selection of intricate kirigami works on paper.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Nora Turato at Sprüth Magers, Berlin, which will debut a series of new enamel panels featuring a custom typeface and site-specific wall paintings that cut through the cacophony of everyday life and reflect on the vernacular of present-day visual culture and zeitgeist.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce Bernd and Hilla Becher’s first solo exhibition at Sprüth Magers, Berlin. Showcasing the Bechers’ iconic style and formal rigor will be several rarely seen works along with two typologies that allude to the cultural and social significance of the constructions the artists referred to as “anonymous sculptures.”

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Duotopia, a major exhibition by Cao Fei at Sprüth Magers, Berlin, which will transform all of the gallery's spaces and premiere several new works outside of China that delve into the metaverse, virtual reality and the interactions between human and machine consciousness.

Since the early 2000s, Sterling Ruby has moved nimbly between mediums and disciplines, connecting art, craft, popular culture, history, philosophy and other fields to produce a rich compendium of objects and images. Deeply invested in the materials he uses, Ruby incorporates their histories and tactile qualities into each of his series, as well as his autobiography and world view.

Sprüth Magers is delighted to announce the gallery's first exhibition of South Korean artist Hyun-Sook Song. In her practice, Song has developed a distinctive style and technique, using tempera, a type of paint consisting of pigments mixed with egg, as the main material. Despite having lived in Germany for fifty years, Song’s artistic outlook has been strongly influenced by Eastern philosophy and calligraphy as well as by her approach to nature and body.

Robert Irwin has spent over six decades producing art that examines our experience of seeing and moving through the world, heightening viewers' awareness of their senses and surroundings. Regularly employing light, reflection and colors as their primary materials, his wall works, sculptures and site-conditional installations involve a careful balance of presence and absence that use simple, understated means to generate sophisticated visual and spatial effects. 

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to announce Nancy Holt’s (1938–2014) first solo exhibition at the Berlin gallery. Mirrors of Light presents the room-scale installation with the same title, a work from 1973/74 that is crucial to understanding Holt’s notion of perceptual experience. Holt’s practice navigates the complexities of light as artistic medium, physical reality, and aesthetic concept.

Dates and opening times:

November 6, 2021, 11am–6pm

November 13, 2021, 11am–6pm

November 27, 2021, 11am–6pm

Otto Piene was an artistic pioneer, from his years as co-founder of the Zero group in Düsseldorf to his massive environmental installations across the United States and Europe. The online exhibition explores his Sky Art projects in particular, illuminating their experimental, participatory and collaborative nature. This phase of his work flourished to a large degree through the opportunities and connections he made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.