We are very pleased to present the exhibition “Empty Places, Crowded Hearts” at our Berlin gallery. On view is a cross-generational panorama of female artistic strategies with abstract or abstracting references. In doing so, influential positions from the 1970s and 1980s are brought into dialogue with current trends.

The works on view by Channa Horwitz, Hanne Darboven, Charlotte Posenenske, Sylvie Fleury, and Rosemarie Trockel exemplify a conceptual engagement with structure through serial systems, time-based orders, and a critical reflection on cultural and material codes. Their practices have had a lasting impact on the understanding of structure as both an intellectual and a social principle.

Younger artists such as Ruscha Voormann, Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg, Sophie-Luise Passow, Judith Fegerl, and Carola Dertnig further develop these approaches, exploring surfaces, materials, and narrative constellations as open and fragile systems in which body, space, and image enter into dynamic relationships.

The exhibition thus brings together works by ten artists from different generations who engage with fundamental questions of order, materiality, and perception. Serial and conceptual methodologies are given equal significance alongside corporeal and material-oriented processes as well as performative approaches.

Channa Horwitz (1932–2013) was an American conceptual artist and a leading figure in Conceptual and Minimal Art. She became known for her strictly systematic drawings and numerical codes, through which she translated time, rhythm, and movement into visual, almost musical structures. After studying graphic design and fine arts, she developed the conceptual drawing system “Sonakinatography,” a precise, grid-based graphic language that served as the foundation for multimedia performances and could be understood by all art forms. Horwitz described this system as a universal visual philosophy whose fixed rules were not a limitation but rather the prerequisite for infinite variations and creative freedom. She received significant recognition, particularly posthumously, for this body of work, which she pursued for decades.

Hanne Darboven (1941–2009) was one of the most significant German artists working in the fields of Minimal and Conceptual art. At the heart of her work was time as the essence of human existence, which she made visible through complex systems of writing, numbers, and order. Drawing on calendar dates and mathematical calculations, she created large-scale serial works that interweave personal, historical, and philosophical dimensions. After completing her studies in Hamburg and spending formative years in New York, she developed a unique conceptual visual language, which she later expanded to include text adaptations and her own musical compositions. She gained international recognition for her innovative approach to systematization and time, and represented Germany on multiple occasions at the Venice Biennale and at documenta.

Since the 1980s, Rosemarie Trockel (1952) has been developing a multifaceted body of work that includes knitted pieces, sculptures, installations, drawings, and films. Her artistic practice centers on questions of identity, gender roles, culture, and the conditions of artistic production. With critical humor and a keen interest in social codes, she combines various materials and everyday objects into often surprising, ambiguous constellations. Her works challenge social norms and hierarchies, while grotesque and imaginative elements open up new spaces for interpretation. Her work has been presented internationally in numerous renowned museums and exhibition venues and is now represented in major public collections. In addition, as a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy until 2016, she shaped several generations of artists.

In the 1960s, Charlotte Posenenske (1939–1985) developed serial and modular sculptures made of industrial materials such as galvanized sheet metal and corrugated cardboard, which could be arranged flexibly and adapted to different spatial contexts. With her open-ended, infinitely reproducible series of works, she fundamentally challenged traditional notions of authorship, originality, and the value of the artwork. She based her work on her own sophisticated theories about the creation of art and the art market. Her practice was closely linked to social criticism, which she viewed as a tool for reflecting on social and institutional structures. As she became increasingly critical of art’s potential to bring about social change, she ended her artistic career in 1968 and turned to sociology—a step that continues to make her work appear as a consistently socially oriented stance to this day.

Carola Dertnigs's (1963) drawings, videos, and installations explore the performative nature of language and the body as a medium for conveying socially critical, feminist, and political themes. Feminist perspectives and an explicit interest in the politicization of gender are among the central aspects of her work. As an actress and dancer, she frequently performs in everyday situations, deliberately acting as a disruptive presence to draw attention to issues such as identity, one’s own existence, and one’s place in society. After spending many years in New York, Carola Dertnig has headed the Department of Performative Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna since 2006. In 2013, she received the Austrian Art Prize, and in 2022, the Culture Prize of the State of Lower Austria.

Ruscha Voormann creates abstract visual worlds characterized by processes of transformation, condensation, and rhythmic order. Having initially explored the transitions between figuration and abstraction, she now devotes herself exclusively to abstract painting. Using techniques she has developed herself, she explores the tension between deliberate control and chance, as well as between calculation and openness. Her works are characterized by subtle shifts, multi-layered surfaces, and a distinctive visual language in which movement, depth, and rhythm engage in dialogue with one another. Born in 1992 in Flensburg, she lives and works in Munich, where she studied under Gregor Hildebrandt at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Her works have been shown in over 30 solo and group exhibitions, including in Berlin, New York, Munich, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Cologne.

In her artistic practice, Judith Fegerl (1977) operates at the intersections of art, architecture, technology, and nature. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Peter Kogler and Birgit Jürgenssen, as well as at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Karel Dudesek, Thomas Fürstner, and Peter Weibel. Her work focuses on the hidden structures, functions, and interdependencies of spaces, technical systems, and electrically powered machines. In her installation-based works, she develops her own apparatus that makes physical, chemical, and electrical processes visible and allows energy itself to be experienced as an artistic material. She is less interested in form than in revealing the relationships, systems, and temporal processes that shape architecture, surfaces, and landscapes. Her works draw attention to the often invisible layers and forces that define our built and technological environment.

Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg (1987) seeks to deconstruct the fetishized status of modernism by combining industrial processes and regional craftsmanship with elements of pop culture. She welds, forges, and paints her works herself; her labor-intensive practice makes use of industrial tools and production techniques. However, her playful use of shapes and colors contrasts with the heavy, cool materials she frequently employs. In her work, Dunkelberg moves between figuration and abstraction, uses symbols of girlishness and femininity to engage with patriarchal structures, and employs humor as a means of subverting existing norms.

Sylvie Fleury (1961) is a contemporary Swiss artist whose installations, sculptures, and mixed-media works explore our emotional and aesthetic relationships with consumer culture. She rose to prominence in the 1990s with her “Shopping Bag” installations and subsequently developed a body of work that is as provocative as it is playful. By subverting the codes of consumerism and exploring the interplay between fashion and art, she has shaped a new artistic trend while continually questioning the relationship between desire and fetishism.

Sophie-Luise Passow (1994) creates paintings and photographs that explore the ambivalence of visibility and concealment. Drawing on biological structures and processes, she translates what is invisible to the human eye into abstract visual worlds and interconnects scientific, organic, and imaginary systems. In doing so, she simultaneously reflects on the mechanisms of representation and value creation in late capitalism, as her works question the boundaries between original and image, nature and construction, and surface and depth.