In his new exhibition at Galerie Thomas Fischer, Joachim Bandau combines pieces from two very different bodies of work.
On the one hand, he presents a large four-part watercolor from 2006. At the time, Bandau was experimenting with color, or more precisely, exclusively with yellow, in a series of watercolors that was otherwise only executed in black and white. Bandau places color surface over color surface and in the process generates unusually vibrant, dynamic structures. The precisely, evenly applied layers generate a spatial depth that is otherwise rare in the medium of watercolor.
Mask from 1974 is a black wall object. This work comes from a series of sculptures usually made of polyester that he began in 1967. The surface of this sculpture, which has also been presented in earlier exhibitions as a floor work, is a matte black. The works of this series have recently been the focus of much attention and the subject of a major individual exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in 2021. Early sculptures are currently featured in the exhibitions “Human Is” at Schinkel Pavillon (until 23 July) and “Plastic World” at Schirn Kunsthalle (until 1 October).

In his fourth exhibition at Galerie Thomas Fischer, Friedemann Heckel presents a series of watercolors that have been created since 2020. Based on photographs taken with his mobile phone, he painted large-scale still lifes and idiosyncratic portraits. The material itself comes to the foreground: the watercolor runs across the surface and frays, opening to the abstract and contrasting against the untouched white of the paper. And the figures? A captivating light brightens their faces and bodies, the light of a screen, the sun, a lighter. They seem lost in reverie or to be looking vaguely into the distance. What do they see? What do we see? Speculative melancholy and lurking premonitions.

The exhibition is being held at two locations — on Mulackstraße 14 (Thu-Sat, 12–6 pm) and on Potsdamer Straße 98 (Wed-Sat, 12–6 pm).

Dirk Braeckman’s fourth exhibition at Galerie Thomas Fischer explores three typologies: landscape, bodies, and indoor spaces. Using his rich palette of dark, dense monochromes, which have become so synonymous with Braeckman’s photographs, the artist’s matte surfaces offset the play of light and shadow, with each frame enigmatically speaking to the sensuality of memories unspoken. Bringing together new works with older images produced over the past decade, Braeckman delves into his archive of negatives to show both large-scale and medium-format works, all of which leave ghostly imprints that transform the seemingly insignificant minutiae of life into haunting presences.

For this new exhibition at Galerie Thomas Fischer, Laetitia Gendre presents colorful works on paper that deal with the relationship between image and language created by search engines such as Google along with a series of graphite drawings entitled Secret Passages and a mural. The drawings and the mural pay metaphorical homage to the transitive and ungraspable in contrast to the ever-increasing collusion between words and things and to the imperative to define and classify. The title Like a Slug Sticks to the Ground, is a simile used by Belgian philosopher Pascal Chabot to describe how relationship between language and things should not operate.