Barbara Kruger’s iconic artistic practice explores the power of image and word within the dynamics of control, corruption, and consumerism. Untitled (WAR TIME, WAR CRIME) (2025) especially manifests Kruger’s stylized politicality, a black-and-white catalogue of various types of war, ranging in scale from global to interpersonal. At first, this confrontational taxonomy reads like a chant, using rhyming and alliteration to develop a playful harmony between militant units. However, Kruger quickly slips into Orwellian territory, asking her viewers to imagine a world without women. In the concluding line, Kruger has x-ed out the only two pronouns in red, a powerful act that resists identification, complicity, and accountability. This work is part of a series featuring this body of text, one of which was recently included in the artist’s acclaimed installation at MoMA’s Marron Family Atrium in 2022.

Barbara Kruger is an icon of feminist art. In visually striking compositions of image and text, she disrupts the hegemonies and social codes of capitalism, patriarchy, and consumer culture. This exalted practice is exemplified in Untitled (Your Assignment is to Divide and Conquer) (1981), in which the small, menacing face of a man peers out from a cage of eight shadowy pillars, overlaid with the text: “Your assignment is to divide and conquer.” It is unclear if this command is for the feminist viewer to recognize and resist the terrorizing power of patriarchy or for the caged man, an index for patriarchalism generally, to exercise its dominance via division and conquest, subduing women one by one. Ascribing an effective methodology of obtaining and keeping power, this open question exchanges positionalities of empowerment and disempowerment.

Since the mid-2000s, Rosemarie Trockel has developed a compelling body of hand-knitted wool works that serve as both a dialogue with her iconic 1980s machine-produced wool paintings and a meditation on the history of the monochrome. In each case, a large-scale monochromatic panel is displayed alongside a smaller, corresponding “study” measuring 1 x 1 meter. The larger panel is enclosed in a wooden frame on all four sides, whereas the smaller study is framed on only two sides. This choice not only emphasizes the rich color of the wool but also offers commentary on the artistic process and the discourses surrounding painting, presentation and perception. Like a painting whose brushstrokes become apparent upon close inspection, Golden Brown and Study for Golden Brown (2005) reveal their materiality up close. By employing wool within a Minimalist, monochrome context, Trockel subverts the tradition of monochrome painting, injecting feminist critique into a historically male-dominated genre and redefining its conceptual boundaries.

Rosemarie Trockel is one of the most important and influential German conceptual artists whose feminist practice continues to challenge traditional notions of gender and artistic production. Since the late 1980s, the stovetop has been one of her signature motifs, an everyday object heavily associated with women and their domestic labor. Her sculptures and wall-mounted reliefs simplify and abstract the symbol, referencing the patriarchal world of twentieth-century abstraction and Minimalism, while offering a female-driven alternative. A Day in Bed (2018) is a white ceramic object whose form echoes a corner of a conventional electric stove. The work’s title suggests rest, vulnerability or perhaps withdrawal from public life – themes that resonate with Trockel’s ongoing exploration of the private versus the public, and the roles assigned to women within those spheres. Partially covered in a shade evoking Yves Klein’s International Klein Blue, the piece uses material and form to interrogate the boundaries between art and craft. Trockel’s art remains a site of critical engagement, humor and surprise – qualities that A Day in Bed both embodies and extends.

George Condo’s recent large-scale pastel and acrylic works offer a glimpse into the artist’s creative process, the diversity of his draftsmanship, his vivid sense of color, and his mastery of material. Their large scale and sweeping gestures challenge the limits of improvisation within this medium, spontaneously deploying gesso, fields of color, and dramatic strokes of pastel, all without the benefit of preparatory sketches, in order to express various states of the human psyche. The sense of electricity created by the faceted composition of Centrifuge (2024), for example, signals the complex and often conflicted nature of the mind. Overlapping and intersecting shapes suggest figurative elements, while also emphasizing the movements, lines and rhythms of their making. This recent pastel evokes fluidity and tumult – Condo’s reflection, perhaps, on his ricocheting innermost feelings and thoughts.

Andreas Gursky stands out as one of the most important photographers of his generation. A chronicler of our age, Gursky’s large-format photographs capture the minutiae of modern-day experience – be it through landscape, architecture, or human industry – much in the same way as history painters approached everyday life in centuries past. Mediamarkt (2016) depicts a sprawling electronics store lined with rows of vividly colored appliances such as irons, vacuum cleaners and coffee machines. Gursky’s meticulous composition transforms the overwhelming man-made landscape into a tableau of quotidian sublime, where the scale and uniformity reveal both the appeal and excess of the ever-expanding spaces of consumerism. Offering a profound commentary on mass consumption and conformity, the work invites viewers to contemplate the realities of our changing world.

Since the artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss began working together in 1979, their joint, multimedia practice documented the material world with visual wit, recasting the ordinary and mundane as whimsical and spectacular. Their unconventional approach to sculpture utilizes traditional techniques such as molding, carving, and casting to create unusual and often humorous results. In 1986, they began molding everyday objects in black rubber on a 1:1 scale, such as the brick wall and plant portrayed in this selection of works dating from 1986 to 1987. Novel and unexpected, the use of rubber as a sculptural material generates what seems like an “image,” or “shadow,” of the original object. Cast in the pitch-black substance, the familiar becomes almost unknowable, creating a sense of both irritation and amusement. The artist’s selection of cast objects is seemingly arbitrary and without a coherent narrative; however, they are visually linked by their viscous materiality, deep color and uncanny affect.

Since the artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss began working together in 1979, their joint, multimedia practice documented the material world with visual wit, recasting the ordinary and mundane as whimsical and spectacular. Their unconventional approach to sculpture utilizes traditional techniques such as molding, carving, and casting to create unusual and often humorous results. In 1986, they began molding everyday objects in black rubber on a 1:1 scale, such as the brick wall and plant portrayed in this selection of works dating from 1986 to 1987. Novel and unexpected, the use of rubber as a sculptural material generates what seems like an “image,” or “shadow,” of the original object. Cast in the pitch-black substance, the familiar becomes almost unknowable, creating a sense of both irritation and amusement. The artist’s selection of cast objects is seemingly arbitrary and without a coherent narrative; however, they are visually linked by their viscous materiality, deep color and uncanny affect.

A pioneer in conceptual art, John Baldessari often used found media, including film stills, to challenge authorship and meaning, positioning him as one of the most original voices in contemporary art. Executed in 2001, The Overlap Series: Man (Entangled In Net)/Street Scene exemplifies Baldessari’s playful reworking of spatial logic and visual language. Featuring panels depicting street scenes of Los Angeles, juxtaposed with others taken from B-movie film stills, this important series layers photographic imagery and blends the worlds of everyday reality and fiction. At the meeting point of these panels, Baldessari introduces bold color-blocking atop parts of the imagery, a hallmark of his artistic style that simultaneously hides and emphasizes elements of his compositions. This act of visual erasure aligns with the artist’s broader rejection of traditional representation, and illustrates his attention to the “space between” things we might otherwise overlook.

Cyprien Gaillard’s multifaceted practice examines the cyclical interactions between nature, human industry, conservation and decay, made visible and palpable through materials gleaned from meaningful sites across the globe. Gaillard’s new series of large-scale fabric-wrapped acoustic panels – salvaged from the gutted auditorium of Trieste’s Museo Revoltella – explores the patterns by which forms, environments and histories interweave across time. Life in the cracks (Part 4) (2025) bears the beautiful ghostly pattern of repeated touch: past visitors brushed against the velvet, inadvertently leaving marks that turn the surfaces into abstract canvases or modern cave paintings. Each panel features a single, hand-embroidered motif along one edge, where the material once concealed by frames transitions into exposed sections. Stitched onto this demarcation, a skeleton in motion inspired by the Danse Macabre serves as a reminder of death’s inevitability and alludes to the echoes of past eras, spaces and sounds.

Works from this series are currently featured in Gaillard’s solo exhibition Retinal Rivalry at Sprüth Magers, Berlin, on view through July 26, 2025.

Reinhard Mucha is a leading German sculptor and conceptual artist known for combining formal rigor and conceptual clarity with painterly and sculptural detail, often infused with subtle irony. Goyatz (2025) is a captivating example of Mucha’s sculptural understanding and exemplifies his complex visual language and ongoing exploration of sculpture’s boundaries. Composed as a corner or an angle, it calls to mind basic architectural forms, connecting the work directly with its surrounding space. Its sleek frontal appearance – characterized by an aluminum profile covered by two glass panes – operates within the strategies of Minimalism but undermines them when viewed from the side. Here, the work is open, unfolding an almost Baroque moment with its spatial dynamism, while at the same time evoking Arte Povera by employing simple materials like wood and felt. Formally, the work resembles a window or display case; however, rather than offering an unobstructed view inside, the felt covering and reflective glass mirror the space that lies in front of it, literally showcasing the conditions of its own display – a recurring theme in Mucha’s work, which consistently interrogates the modes of exhibiting itself.

From the 1960s onwards, German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher began systematically capturing industrial architecture across Europe and North America, challenging the perceived gap between documentary and fine art photography. Ventilator Cooler, Zeche Hannover, Bochum, D (1973) and Water Tower, Broadway/Houston St., New York City, USA (1978) are both characteristic of the Bechers’ formal arrangements. The former comprises four black-and-white views of a ventilation cooler for a coal mine in Bochum, Germany and the latter is of a rooftop water tower in Manhattan, New York. Each structure is utilitarian; yet, by photographing constructions like these as if they are sculptures, the Bechers challenge viewers to understand the medium beyond its function of cataloging the visual world and revel in the unintended and overlooked beauty in the forms of modern life.

A major solo show by Bernd and Hilla Becher will be on view at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne in September 2025.

From the 1960s onwards, German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher began systematically capturing industrial architecture across Europe and North America, challenging the perceived gap between documentary and fine art photography. Ventilator Cooler, Zeche Hannover, Bochum, D (1973) and Water Tower, Broadway/Houston St., New York City, USA (1978) are both characteristic of the Bechers’ formal arrangements. The former comprises four black-and-white views of a ventilation cooler for a coal mine in Bochum, Germany and the latter is of a rooftop water tower in Manhattan, New York. Each structure is utilitarian; yet, by photographing constructions like these as if they are sculptures, the Bechers challenge viewers to understand the medium beyond its function of cataloging the visual world and revel in the unintended and overlooked beauty in the forms of modern life.

A major solo show by Bernd and Hilla Becher will be on view at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne in September 2025.

Anne Imhof is recognized internationally for her genrespanning practice that encompasses performance and choreography, painting and drawing, and installation and sculpture. Her poignant abstractions are frequently characterized by a keen interest in the human body, and though her work is inherently multifaceted and continues to expand into ever more media, painting remains a consistent through line within her oeuvre. Poppy Runner II (2025) is part of Imhof’s latest large-scale paintings, which are based on film stills that were captured directly from a screen, creating a blurry effect and moiré patterns. The resulting images undergo digital reworking before being translated into alluring oil canvases. This particular motif is derived from The Basketball Diaries (1995), a coming-of-age drama that explores addiction, adolescence and the struggles of urban life, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The formal abstraction produced by the various clashes of pixels highlights the character’s gesture and renders his youthful yet vulnerable body into a distinctly alien entity.

Over a prolific two decades, the late artist Kaari Upson created a groundbreaking body of work that delved into the deep-seeded motivations and urges that characterize the human experience. In obsessively composed drawings, haunting paintings, engaging videos and pigmented sculptures that range from intimate objects to room-sized installations, the artist explored the nature of our relationships with ourselves and others, as well as with the domestic spaces we inhabit. Infinite Return (2017) is a stunning example from her celebrated series of furniture-based sculptures, which she began to produce in 2012 using mattresses, sofas and other objects found discarded near her studio in Los Angeles. Upson cast these forms in silicone and urethane, fascinated with the possibility of lifting and replicating not only their physical surfaces, but also the emotional, psychological impressions of those who had used them. Infinite Return’s circular, tondo-like composition and dustings of charcoal perfectly illustrate Upson’s painterly style and play with material, as well as her vivid exploration of the beauty and darkness that coexist within our innermost selves.

Kaari Upson’s drawings formed a fundamental part of her practice, serving as experimental fields within which she works out the concepts and forms that frequently make their way into her sculptures, videos, and large-scale installations. Like much of Upson’s work, her drawings connote mixed feelings of attraction and disturbance. Untitled (Lips) (2014–16) and Untitled (Go Inside) (2011) offer an intimate look at different approaches she took to paper media, as well as the motifs and characters that recurred throughout her practice, including her semi-fictional fantasy man, Larry; his idol, Hugh Hefner, and his Playboy Mansion; Angelina Jolie’s lips, pictured here; and an array of twins and models, as well as glimpses of the artist herself. Woven among photorealistic imagery and sketches, and sometimes filling a drawing entirely, are Upson’s textual notations, which work continually through themes of repetition, pleasure and desire, home and the uncanny, inside and outside. The drawings’ layers function like a panoply of voices, their visual and aural repetitions echoing across the page.

Kaari Upson’s drawings formed a fundamental part of her practice, serving as experimental fields within which she works out the concepts and forms that frequently make their way into her sculptures, videos, and large-scale installations. Like much of Upson’s work, her drawings connote mixed feelings of attraction and disturbance. Untitled (Lips) (2014–16) and Untitled (Go Inside) (2011) offer an intimate look at different approaches she took to paper media, as well as the motifs and characters that recurred throughout her practice, including her semifictional fantasy man, Larry; his idol, Hugh Hefner, and his Playboy Mansion; Angelina Jolie’s lips, pictured here; and an array of twins and models, as well as glimpses of the artist herself. Woven among photorealistic imagery and sketches, and sometimes filling a drawing entirely, are Upson’s textual notations, which work continually through themes of repetition, pleasure and desire, home and the uncanny, inside and outside. The drawings’ layers function like a panoply of voices, their visual and aural repetitions echoing across the page.

Sterling Ruby’s wide-ranging, multidisciplinary work spans urethane and bronze sculptures, large-scale textile collages, handmade ceramics, and hallucinatory color-field canvases, reckoning with the conflict between individual desires and social structures. Ruby’s HORIZON. Shortness of Breath. (2025) is a dramatic fusion of intensely colored oil and acrylic over collaged cardboard on canvas, with a thin reclining band of polychromatic miscellany at the bottom of the composition, acting as an enigmatic horizon line. The painting draws upon the aesthetics of abstraction and brims with psychological unrest, manifesting in textured abundance and emotive smearing. HORIZON, the title of Ruby’s new series of vibrant, landscape-oriented paintings to which this belongs, refers both to the canon of landscape imagery and futurity, the social and psychological uncertainty of events to come.

Through collage, drawing, sculpture and film, Kara Walker scrutinizes the cultural and psychological implications of racism. Her signature black silhouettes have appeared in exhibitions worldwide since the 1990s and have cemented her as one of the most complex American artists of her generation. Magician – After the Original (2024) reprises a bust included in Walker’s monumental sculpture Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) (2024), currently installed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In addition to its allegorical meaning within the larger sculpture, the title recalls the recurring trope in American popular culture of the “magical negro,” who assists the main (white) protagonist using mystical insight and wisdom. Epitomizing Walker’s prowess in constructing narratives imbued with layers of references, these two works question the stories – both real histories and fabrications – we tell about Black bodies.

Through collage, drawing, sculpture and film, Kara Walker scrutinizes the cultural and psychological implications of racism. Her signature black silhouettes have appeared in exhibitions worldwide since the 1990s and have cemented her as one of the most complex American artists of her generation. Ascent of the Sybarite Women (2024), whose title suggests mythological narratives, comprises a network of cut-paper limbs and heads defined by brilliant strokes of watercolor and sumi-e ink. In this body of work, Walker alludes to the notion of the sublime in art, fusing traditions of “grand” landscape painting with contemporary ideas of freedom and individual determination.

Jenny Holzer’s text-based practice is an ongoing artistic investigation of language and the construction of political meaning. Since the late 1970s, her texts have appeared on posters, LED signs, benches, paintings and plaques, where they have the power to affect viewers in everyday situations. After dark it’s a relief to see a girl… (1981), part of an early series of hand-painted enamel signs, draws from Holzer’s Living (1980–82), in which she presents quiet observations, directions and warnings. Written in a matter-of-fact style suitable to describing everyday life, these commentaries touch on how individuals negotiate landscapes, expectations, desires, fears, other bodies and themselves. Here, the artist addresses the imposing, sometimes fearsome dominance of men over women—like all her sentiments, though it was written over four decades ago, it still feels relevant today.

This March, the Glenstone Museum reopened its Pavilions with a new presentation by Holzer.

For over three decades, Arthur Jafa has produced imagery that dissects the realities, constructions, and influence of Blackness in contemporary culture. Through strategies of appropriation, his works reveal poignant gaps and connections between different sources through the power of juxtaposition. Black Man (2025) is part of a series that depicts the album cover of Black Man, an imagined collaboration between the band War and Jimi Hendrix. The silhouette of a man clapping is overlaid with a halo-like circle: the edges of the record worn onto the cover image. The two musical powerhouses did in fact once play together, at the London club Ronnie’s in 1970, the day before Hendrix died. Jafa extends this moment in time, generating an alternative reality in which Hendrix lived to create more music. As Jafa has said of his work, “The aim is not necessarily to make explicit statements, but to engage with the complex dynamics of race, success, and survival, offering an experience rather than a specific message.”

Karen Kilimnik’s richly imaginative figurative paintings transform recognizable iconography, from both “high” and “low” culture, through deft manipulations of both content and painterly material, creating a fantastical visual domain enveloped in delight. A recurring reference for Kilimnik is England, painting picturesque pastoral landscapes of the English countryside, symbols and historical persons of the British aristocracy, and consciously embracing the tradition of Romanticism. Yet, in Miss England, Scotland Yard detective (2015/24), Kilimnik’s English cultural touchpoint is more contemporary: Mattel’s United Kingdom Barbie Doll. This portrait is both a caricature of Englishness, the blonde, blue-eyed Barbie dons a Burberry-esque trench coat and Union Jack scarf, and a sincere negotiation with gendered stereotypes, her masculine brown fedora, typical of a hard-boiled detective from 1930s crime fiction, sitting askew on her perfect, girlish side ponytail. Kilimnik’s painted figure is both a Scotland Yard detective and Miss England, a marrying of prototypically masculine and feminine tropes.

Drawing has been a crucial part of Karen Kilimnik’s practice since the mid-1970s. Her works on paper develop from the artist’s careful contemplation of historical and cultural touchstones, often producing imaginative portraits that simultaneously capture an emotional tenderness and her iconic penchant for fantasy. Such is true for Spying in Berlin (1988), a gestural crayon sketch of a glamorous woman riding an escalator in what may be a train station or airport, as the artist hints at in her notes on the composition’s edge. The woman, Kilimnik’s spy, is on the lookout; her crossed knee and gloved hands veer against the direction of her gaze. Diligently watching someone or something that is just out of view, both her mystery and elegant presence command our attention. The gold frame – a common feature of Kilimnik’s works – enhances its sense of Romanticism and draws attention to the curvature and lushness of Kilimnik’s mark-making.

Henni Alftan’s artistic practice is grounded in a profound exploration of the medium of painting, examining its methods and histories. Her intimate yet 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. Tie (2024) exemplifies Alftan’s distinctive approach – using a tightly cropped composition that draws intense focus to the motif while subtly hinting at the space beyond the canvas, her works evoke cinematic techniques that generate curiosity and suspense. As so often, Alftan utilizes a diverse set of painterly gestures – here, flat areas of color sit next to strokes of thick impasto that mimic the tie’s texture.

Alftan’s upcoming solo show at Sprüth Magers, Berlin, opens September 12, 2025.

Untitled (2024) originates from a new body of drawings, marking the artist’s recent shift toward embracing drawing as an autonomous medium. The work on paper features three items – a cotton bud, a strip of fake eyelashes and a hair tie – arranged in a flat lay. However, any implied narrative remains deliberately ambiguous, imparting a cool tension. As in all of Alftan’s works, her skillful use of scale, perspective and texture, reveals the strangeness in the ordinary.

Alftan’s upcoming solo show at Sprüth Magers, Berlin, opens September 12, 2025.

Utilizing text as her artistic source material, Nora Turato collates and dissects the cacophonous barrage of information we find ourselves confronted with daily. Funneling appropriated words, fragments and quotes into performances, books, enamel panels, installations, and video works, the artist arrives at captivating incantations that harness the essence and the nonsense of what collectively moves us. In 2024, Turato began developing a new body of large-scale pastel works that mark the beginning of the seventh installment of her pools – anthologies of colloquial speech and found text she compiles from a myriad of sources. This time, the artist’s original writing features more prominently alongside found language, confronting the tropes that exploit our needs, desires and vulnerabilities. Delving into themes of collective disembodiment, Turato examines the cultural obsession with surface image that neglects the body and emotion.

Thomas Demand constructs intricate paper models of images he culls from sources such as newspapers, magazines and postcards. These models are then transformed into large-scale, sharp photographic prints. Demand’s latest work, Melonen (2025), is based on a press image documenting confiscated contraband – fake melons containing methamphetamine – seized at the US–Mexico border. Through his constructed worlds, the artist interrogates the paradoxes of perception, probing how we read our surroundings, how we remember them, and the ways we are influenced and manipulated. Convincingly real yet eerily artificial, Demand’s work deftly navigates the space between sculpture and photography, illusion and image, reality and interpretation.

Thea Djordjadze’s paintings are exemplary of her embodied practice, which concerns itself with the poetics and particularities of space as well as the natural inclinations of her varied materials. These works are formed from plaster, with pigment incorporated into and onto their porous surfaces. The artist scratches, gouges, and layers into her surface, imbuing the work with a tangible sense of immediacy. In works such as Untitled (2025), each gesture builds upon the last: some are assertive, deep scratches and sweeping movements or bold strokes of color, while others are delicate, characterized by faint washes or subtle indentations. Here, pastel greens, pale flesh tones, a tempestuous black swirl, and an unexpected bright red generate a dreamlike atmosphere. A distinctive fusion of sculpture and painting, Djordjadze’s untitled work is alive with process, memory and potential.

Gala Porras-Kim’s research-driven practice examines how our understanding of cultural artifacts is shaped by the museological and modern epistemological conventions that dictate their collection, taxonomy, preservation and display. San Vitale, Ravenna, marble floor reconstruction (2025) is the latest in her series of large-scale, intricately detailed color pencil drawings depicting marble tiles in Ravenna, Italy – in this case, the church of San Vitale’s reconstructed labyrinth floor mosaic, situated in front of the altar. During the sixteenth century, the basilica’s floor was renovated not only for aesthetic reasons but also to elevate it significantly, protecting it from recurrent flooding. Performing a close reading of uncataloged histories, Porras-Kim reveals the signs of care and neglect, conservation and flawed restoration efforts embedded within the surface. Using a medium that is itself inherently subjective and resistant to mechanical reproduction, this work challenges the notion of historical accuracy. By recording the visible layers of time, the drawing emphasizes how histories are shaped by intervention, subject to inevitable decay, and perpetually open to reinterpretation.

Porras-Kim’s work is on view in her solo show The categorical bind at Sprüth Magers, London, running through July 26, 2025.

Louise Lawler ranks among the pioneering female artists associated with the Pictures Generation of the 1970s and 80s. Her conceptual photography captures art objects in situ at museums, auction houses or private homes. Lawler’s image-making is interested in the ways art and meaning itself can be produced and manipulated through modes of presentation. For Water to Skin (Venti) (2016/2017), she photographed Matisse’s The Swimming Pool (1952) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, distilling the celebrated work into lines and reflections in the display’s protective glass and the texture of the burlap background. Although Lawler does not intervene directly in the spaces she photographs, the artist’s adept approach to selecting, cropping, scaling and presenting images, along with her titles, redirects viewers’ attention and gaze. The work is representative of Lawler’s oeuvre which investigates the production, conditions, framing and circulation of artworks, culminating in images both wry and poetic in nature.

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 color evoke the dreamlike works of Symbolist, Surrealist and Nabi painters. Bak’s latest work, Night Sprouts (2025), conjures two ghostly figures at dusk that could be sculptures in a hidden garden or nymphs entering the water for a midnight swim in a sea of blues and greens. Bak’s figures often inhabit such liminal spaces: existing somewhere between stillness and action, between life and death, they unfurl from dark leafy backgrounds, as seen in Night Sprouts, to evoke deep emotion and the unconscious.

Oliver Bak’s artistic practice is inspired by the idea of spectrality, exploring remnants of the past and envisioning historical narratives and experiences. Poppyhead (2024) is a striking bronze sculpture featuring a partially obscured face overlaid with poppy seed pods. Bak invokes the motif of the poppy throughout his oeuvre as a potent symbol with layered meanings: it represents both dreams, due to its intoxicating effects, and mortality, given that the flower and its seeds are associated with Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, a figure also connected to eternal slumber. Through this juxtaposition, Poppyhead investigates themes of beauty intertwined with illness and inevitable decay, inviting viewers to contemplate the transient nature of life.

Robert Elfgen (*1972) lives and works in Cologne. From 1997 to 2001, he studied with John Armleder at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) and became Meisterschüler of Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2001. Selected solo exhibitions include PIBI, Seoul and Norbert Arns, Cologne (both 2022), Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2021), Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2016), Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg (2015), Marianne Boesky, New York (2009), westlondonprojects, London (2006), and Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2005). Selected group exhibitions include Villa Stuck, Munich (2017), me Collectors Room / Stiftung Olbricht, Berlin (2014), ZKM: Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, and Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg (2007–08).

Robert Elfgen (*1972) lives and works in Cologne. From 1997 to 2001, he studied with John Armleder at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) and became Meisterschüler of Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2001. Selected solo exhibitions include PIBI, Seoul and Norbert Arns, Cologne (both 2022), Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2021), Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2016), Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg (2015), Marianne Boesky, New York (2009), westlondonprojects, London (2006), and Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2005). Selected group exhibitions include Villa Stuck, Munich (2017), me Collectors Room / Stiftung Olbricht, Berlin (2014), ZKM: Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, and Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg (2007–08).

Often employing unconventional pigments derived from nature and her immediate surroundings, Lucy Dodd’s paintings mobilise materials, colors, and shapes to explore personal and global narratives. After spending much of her life in upstate New York, Dodd recently moved back to the United Kingdom, specifically the Scottish coast on the North Sea, where she has created a new body of work that responds to her changed surroundings. Dance of the Nereid (2024) and Between Scylla and Cherybdos (2024) are two such products, frenetic compositions of spills, drops, stains, and surprising chemical reactions from the biota she manipulates. Each has an oceanic quality, tempestuous brushwork and blotting of aquatic colors, which thematically aligns with the references to Greek mythological narratives of sea nymphs and monsters in the respective titles of the paintings.

Often employing unconventional pigments derived from nature and her immediate surroundings, Lucy Dodd’s paintings mobilise materials, colors, and shapes to explore personal and global narratives. After spending much of her life in upstate New York, Dodd recently moved back to the United Kingdom, specifically the Scottish coast on the North Sea, where she has created a new body of work that responds to her changed surroundings. Dance of the Nereid (2024) and Between Scylla and Cherybdos (2024) are two such products, frenetic compositions of spills, drops, stains, and surprising chemical reactions from the biota she manipulates. Each has an oceanic quality, tempestuous brushwork and blotting of aquatic colors, which thematically aligns with the references to Greek mythological narratives of sea nymphs and monsters in the respective titles of the paintings.

Since the 1980s, Hyun-Sook Song has developed a style and technique using egg tempera to create a distinctive and meditative body of work with repeating motifs. Clay pots, wooden poles, silk ribbons and woven textiles associated with her Korean homeland take center stage atop tranquil monochromatic grounds. Song considers painting a performative happening; in the artist’s reduced formal language, each brushstroke represents one unique movement and documents the artist’s inner state of mind. 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 the body. The presence of light and movement through and around the objects in her paintings gives Song’s canvases a powerful, nostalgic invocation, and suggests the ephemeral, ever-shifting nature of memory.

Since the 1980s, Hyun-Sook Song has developed a style and technique using egg tempera to create a distinctive and meditative body of work with repeating motifs. Clay pots, wooden poles, silk ribbons and woven textiles associated with her Korean homeland take center stage atop tranquil monochromatic grounds. Song considers painting a performative happening; in the artist’s reduced formal language, each brushstroke represents one unique movement and documents the artist’s inner state of mind. 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 the body. The presence of light and movement through and around the objects in her paintings gives Song’s canvases a powerful, nostalgic invocation, and suggests the ephemeral, ever-shifting nature of memory.

Mire Lee (*1988, Seoul) lives and works in Seoul and Amsterdam. She holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Sculpture (2012) and Media Arts (2013) from Seoul National University. In October 2024, she created the annual Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern, transforming the Turbine Hall with her visceral sculptures. The installation marked the first major presentation of her work in the UK. Other recent solo exhibitions include Black Sun, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2023), and Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love, Zollamt – MMK, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2022).

Salvo was an Italian Conceptualist in dialogue with the burgeoning Arte Povera movement before his practice dramatically shifted in 1973, when the artist turned decisively to figurative painting. His oil paintings embrace the aesthetics of traditional art histories, from Giotto and Botticelli to Italian Futurism and Surrealism, employing flat geometric forms and rich colors that draw attention to the painting’s artifice. In L’Etna visto da Taormina (1992), Salvo paints a lush lavender mountainscape, foregrounded by orange terrain, violet trees, and dark emerald cacti. Atop the tallest peak, Mount Etna in Sicily, is the billowing of volcanic ash, represented in a fusion of pastel blue and fiery red. As the title suggests, the viewer is gazing upon Etna from Taormina, a nearby town with trails to the volcano’s summit. The path before the viewer invites them into the composition and the sublimity of Salvo’s serene, dreamlike scene.

Andreas Schulze is one of the great individualists of German contemporary painting. His unique, vividly visual worlds, which include sculptures, drawings and expansive installations, are born from careful observation of everyday life. They depict domestic spaces, urban scenes and lush landscape views – all in gleefully distorted fundamental forms that challenge the social and cultural norms of middle-class existence. Ohne Titel (Cake) (2025) perfectly illustrates the artist’s distinctive approach, which combines figuration and abstraction, freely adopting styles derived from Surrealism, Naïve Art and Pop Art. In response to the cake paintings of artists like Wayne Thiebaud and Domenico Gnoli, Schulze creates a scene where large waves of whipped cream hug neat layers of chocolate brown and custard yellow, while on the fringes, a fruit tower balances perfectly still, and strawberries slide down an undefined slope. Though Schulze’s works invite viewers to question the ideals of bourgeois leisure and the experiences that are upheld by its various props and symbols, he does so not with a wagging finger, but through colorful and overabundant images that celebrate life and the joy of living.

Pamela Rosenkranz’s practice explores the scientific and sociocultural systems that profoundly affect humans and the environment. Her interdisciplinary approach incorporates elements from neurology, art history, biorobotics and literature, often blurring the distinctions between nature and culture. In her recent body of works on paper, Healer Scrolls, Rosenkranz continues her inquiry into the archaic image of the serpent, drawing on ancient kirigami cuts and folds to evoke a pattern that resembles the scales of a snake. Healer Scrolls (Blue Marathon) (2025), a new large-scale addition to the series, shimmers in hues reminiscent of mother-of-pearl and is complemented by gestural strokes of pink and blue that suggest a winding motion. Adding another layer of intrigue, the work’s title touches on the snake’s dual nature as both healer and danger – their venom revered as potent medicine yet inherently perilous – while also referencing the historic rolls of paper used for recording information, and the movement required to navigate the internet’s sheer endless wealth of knowledge. By imitating organic material with mechanical precision and alluding to both ancient and modern cultural histories, Rosenkranz reflects on the blurring boundaries between the natural and artificial worlds.

Sylvie Fleury (*1961, Geneva) lives and works in Geneva. Selected solo exhibitions include Kunsthal Rotterdam (2024), Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2023), Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin, Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, China, and Bechtler Stiftung, Uster, Switzerland (all 2022), Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria, the Instituto Svizzero, Rome (both 2019), Villa Stuck, Munich (2016), Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga (2011), MAMCO – Musée de l’art contemporain de Genève (2008–09), Mozarteum, Salzburg (2005), ZKM, Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble (both 2001), and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1995). Recent group exhibitions include Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2022, 2013), Jeu de Paume, Paris (2020), Grand Palais, Paris (2019), Kunsthaus Zurich (2018), Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt (2017) and Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2016).

Astrid Klein (*1951, Cologne) lives and works in Cologne. Recent solo exhibitions include include Fuhrwerkswaage, Cologne (2023), Sammlung Falckenberg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2018), The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2005), Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (2003), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2002), Neues Museum, Nuremberg (2001), Kunsthalle Bielefeld (1989), traveling exhibition by the Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; ICA, London; Vienna Secession and Forum Stadtpark, Graz (all 1989), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (1981). Klein participated in the 14th Sharjah Biennial (2019), Documenta 8 (1987), and the 42nd La Biennale di Venezia (1986). Her works are held in public collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tate, London, the National Museum of Art, Osaka and Museum Ludwig, Cologne.

Thomas Ruff (*1958, Zell am Harmersbach, Germany) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Selected solo exhibitions include Malkasten, Düsseldorf (2024), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2021), K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (2020–21), National Portrait Gallery, London, and Whitechapel Gallery, London (both 2017), National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2016), S.M.A.K., Ghent, traveled to Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (both 2014) and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012). In 2022, Thomas Ruff’s solo exhibition d.o.pe. was presented at Sprüth Magers, Berlin. Recently, his work was on view in group shows at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2022–23), Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2021), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019), Tate Modern, London, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London (both 2018).

Thomas Ruff (*1958, Zell am Harmersbach, Germany) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Selected solo exhibitions include Malkasten, Düsseldorf (2024), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2021), K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (2020–21), National Portrait Gallery, London, and Whitechapel Gallery, London (both 2017), National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2016), S.M.A.K., Ghent, traveled to Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (both 2014) and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012). In 2022, Thomas Ruff’s solo exhibition d.o.pe. was presented at Sprüth Magers, Berlin. Recently, his work was on view in group shows at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2022–23), Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2021), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019), Tate Modern, London, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London (both 2018).

At the core of David Maljkovic’s multifaceted practice are formalist concerns with the nature of artmaking. In his recent series In the Pictorial Code, which was on view at the Quetzal Art Center in 2023, Maljkovic imagines painting as a guardian of time and the painter’s position as its witness. The titular work, In the Pictorial Code (2021), constructs a Cézannesque scene of two painters in a verdant forest. The painters, dwarfed by their canvases and Maljkovic’s composition, behold the ephemeral beauty around them and attempt to capture it, just as the artist himself does. The quickness of Maljkovic’s vertical brushwork is evident in the rare exposure of the reddish underpainting, as if he is working en plein air beside his painted painters. In émergent magazine, Maljkovic explains that the process of painting produces mimicry within the landscape and creates conceptual cracks as the artist and subject alike bear witness to the process of time.

David Maljkovic is currently the subject of a major solo exhibition at Cukrarna, Ljubljana until October 2025.

Walter Dahn (1954–2024) lived and worked in Cologne. Have Love Will Travel. Works 1986–2024, a comprehensive solo exhibition of Dahn’s work, is currently on view at Haus Mödrath in Kerpen near Cologne, running through August 31, 2025. Selected solo exhibitions include Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2019), Kunstmuseum Basel (2017), Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2015), Venus Over Manhattan (2013), Kunstverein Sankt Pauli, Hamburg (2007), Kunstverein Krefeld (2005), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1997), Kunsthalle zu Kiel (1994), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (1989), Museum Folkwang, Essen, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Kunstmuseum Hannover (all 1986) and Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn (1985).

Analia Saban’s singular practice brings together opposing concepts: two and three dimensions, painting and sculpture, digital and analog, industrial and handmade. Her series of woven paintings are no exception. To produce them, Saban weaves linen canvas with “threads” of paint, which she creates by drying thickly painted lines of acrylic into long, pliable strands. Using a Jacquard loom – half of which operates by computer, half with physical labor – she interlaces the paint with the linen into compositions that hover between representation and abstraction. Woven Paint (Fluorescent Orange) (2025), with its Day-Glo orange color, recalls the attention-getting signs of warning and construction, though remains wholly abstract. Mesmerizing both in their symmetry and for their intricate process, Saban’s woven works are in dialogue with the legacies of minimalist and monochromatic painting (including Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman and South American modernists, such as Hélio Oiticica and Mira Schendel), and at the same time rework painterly conventions, incorporating elements of craft, design, and everyday materials and industries.

David Ostrowski (*1981, Cologne) lives and works in Cologne. From 2004–09 he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Albert Oehlen. Ostrowski is a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. Selected solo exhibitions include Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe (2025), Sprüth Magers, New York (2024), Fig., Tokyo and Ramiken, New York (both 2023), Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2021), Lady Helen, London (2020, with Angharad Williams), Avant-Garde Institute, Warsaw (2020, with Tobias Spichtig), Jir Sandel, Copenhagen and Leeahn Gallery, Seoul (both 2020), Sundogs, Paris and Piece Unique, Cologne (both 2019), Sprüth Magers, London and Wschód, Warsaw (both 2018), Halle 9 Kirowwerk, Leipzig and Blueproject Foundation, Barcelona (both 2017), Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2016, with Michail Pirgelis), Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen and Kunstraum Innsbruck (both 2015), Rubell Family Collection, Miami and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (both 2014).

Michail Pirgelis (*1976, Essen) lives and works in Cologne. Next year, his work will be featured in two solo shows: Kunstraum München and Kunstraum Dornbirn (both 2026). Further solo exhibitions include Fuhrwerkswaage and Odyssey, both Cologne (both 2022), Braunsfelder, Cologne (2019, with Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt), Leopold-Hoesch- Museum, Düren (2016, with David Ostrowski), Autocenter Berlin (2015) and Artothek, Cologne (2011). Selected group exhibitions include a.o. Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin (2022), Villa Sarre, Potsdam (2021), Ludwig Forum, Aachen and Gewölbe, Cologne (both 2020), DuMont Kunsthalle, Cologne, Kunsthalle Nuremberg, Haus N, Athens and Riot, Ghent (all 2019), Athens Biennale, Marta Herford (2018), Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2015), Istanbul Modern (2014), Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2013), Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2012), Thessaloniki Biennale (2011), Kunstmuseum Bonn (2010) and Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf (2005). Numerous awards and fellowships include the Berlin Fellowship from Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2013), Audi Art Award for ‘New Positions’ at Art Cologne (2010), Adolf Loos Prize from the Van den Valentyn Foundation, Cologne (2008) and Villa Romana Prize, Florence (2007).