13 MAR until 18 APR 2026

Who’s Spiritual Journey?

Picture a Who on a mountain top,
Wind in their hair and their resting ears aflop,
Pling! sound the bells of a bright new day,
A whole new Who is just another swipe away…

Esther Schipper Berlin is pleased to announce Simon Fujiwara’s Who’s Spiritual Journey, the artist’s third solo presentation with the gallery.

Fujiwara’s cartoon character Who the Baer was created by the artist as a way to playfully critique societal questions through a lovable character. In Who’s Spiritual Journey, Who the Baer seeks out a spiritual new self through the abstract images of the past, searching for a meaning in forms that once promised transcendence. But what kind of spirituality is possible for a flat cartoon character who has no soul to soothe? Who’s Spiritual Journey will feature three new large-scale paintings within a site-specific installation exploring belief, branding and selfhood in an age of endless reinvention. 

On March 19, 2026, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean will open Simon Fujiwara: A Whole New World, a comprehensive overview presenting nearly twenty years of work. Simon Fujiwara is a British-Japanese artist, born in 1982 in London, living and working in Berlin.

Fujiwara is the recipient of the 2010 Baloise Prize at Art Basel and the 2010 Frieze Cartier Award. He was shortlisted for the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2019.

Fujiwara’s recent solo exhibitions include: Simon Fujiwara – Who’s Iconic? Paintings, Drawings and Maquettes From the Whoseum of Who the Baer, G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig, (2025); Dreams of an Owl, Who the Bær and the Wounded Planet, Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2025); Simon Fujiwara: It’s a Small World, Kiasma, Helsinki (2024); Simon Fujiwara, Who the Bær, Prada Aoyama, Tokyo (2022); Simon Fujiwara, Hello Who?, CIRCA Art, public screenings in London, Seoul, New York, Milan, Berlin, Melbourne, Los Angeles (2022); Simon Fujiwara, new work, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2021); Who the Bær, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2021); Hope House, Blaffer Art Museum, Dallas (2020); Joanne, Arken, Skovvej (2019); Revolution, Lafayette Anticipations – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris (2018); Joanne, Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2018); Hope House, Kunsthaus Bregenz (2018); Joanne, The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2016); Figures in a Landscape, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2016); The Humanizer, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2016); White Day, Tokyo Opera City Gallery, Tokyo (2016).

The artist’s work is represented in the collections of the American Embassy, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Sammlung Verbund, Vienna; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Prada Foundation, Milan; Leeds University, Leeds; and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main.

13 MAR until 18 APR 2026

Esther Schipper Berlin is pleased to announce Echoes of KA, an exhibition by Thomias Radin with all new paintings and several sculptural works. This is Radin’s fourth project with the gallery, following his exhibitions in Paris and Seoul, and a presentation in Berlin, between 2025 and 2024, the year he joined the program. 

Profoundly shaped by his birthplace, Guadeloupe, and his upbringing in France, Radin’s practice draws on layered cultural inheritances spanning the Caribbean and Europe. Dance, painting and sculpture interlock in his work. His paintings, often set in hand-carved wooden frames, feature motifs—among them angels, architectural forms, marble, or water—that reflect an engagement with European visual heritage alongside ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Christian mythologies. Taking inspiration from the ancient Egyptian concept of Ka—an invisible life force that transcends time and geography—Radin’s exhibition follows its movement from Africa to the Caribbean and Europe as an allegorical motif that reverberates across music, dance, language, and sculpture. 

In Creole—a language formed from French, Kikongo, and Native Amerindian languages—the verb ka, borrowed from Kikongo, functions as a marker of action and becoming. Within this linguistic context, ka suggests movement and continuity across time and geography. Vitality is understood not as an isolated force, but as something shared and circulating, capable of transformation through bodies and communities. Radin approaches this idea as a framework for thinking about gesture, resonance, and collective action.

The exhibition space is conceived as a quiet courtyard. Two wooden arches flank the entrances to the exhibition, marking points of passage. A sequence of four trompe l’œil frescoes depicting a seascape creates this setting, and mirrored surfaces affixed to two central pillars reflect and multiply the viewer’s presence. Here, the courtyard functions not only as an architectural reference, but also as a social space—a place for encounters, circulation, and contemplation. In this way, it echoes Édouard Glissant’s notion of the “creole garden,” where identity grows through relation, crossings, and exchanges rather than fixed origins. Radin’s courtyard becomes a spatial expression of this idea: an environment where echoes reverberate and histories converge.

For this constellation of paintings, Radin’s process revolves around the idea of echo. His method translates metaphysical and spiritual concepts into visual fragments, recalling how Eadweard Muybridge decomposed movement into sequential images. Each fragment functions as a suspended vibration between what has occurred and what continues to resonate. To dance—to activate and articulate the body—is itself an echo of rhythm and frequency. The paintings, often executed in dynamic gestures, present figures caught midmovement, their poses charged with physical intensity. Movement becomes a vehicle for memory and storytelling, where gesture carries historical and spiritual weight.

Dance is central to Radin’s practice. Music and movement enter his paintings through fragmented bodies, gestural brushwork, and references to Hip Hop, Gwo Ka, and Capoeira. His engagement with Caribbean dance traditions extends to their influence on contemporary choreography, including figures such as Alvin Ailey, Germaine Acogny, and Ismael Ivo, whose practices connect performance with spirituality and political consciousness.

The sculptural works extend this vocabulary into space. Hand-carved and rooted in a family tradition of carpentry practiced over generations, Radin’s structures affirm woodwork as both material inheritance and social model. Architectural elements shape the setting, while bench-like elements invite visitors to sit, contemplate and commune. Part of the bench-like sculptures are oversized dominoes, a recurring motif, that pay tribute to everyday life in Guadeloupe, celebrating vernacular mathematics and the passing of knowledge that forges lasting connections across generations.

Thomias Radin was born in 1993 in Abymes, Guadeloupe. He received his BFA and MFA from the University of Rennes 2 in 2015 and 2018. The artist lives and works in Berlin. Radin is the recipient of the LOOP Fair 2024 prize and the 2025 OELLE Foundation Prize.

Thomias Radin’s solo exhibitions include Rhizome: Time of Revelation, Kunstverein Göttingen (2024), POLYCHROME – The Myth of Karukera & Cibuqueira, Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2023), and The Myth of Inner Landscapes, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2019). Among his group exhibitions are: How The Soil Remembers, Spore Initiative, Berlin (2026); Trouver son Monde, La Galerie du 19M, Paris (2025); La Haute Note Jaune, Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles (2024); Society: Or Infinite Rehearsals, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2024), Poly: A Fluid Show, KINDL- Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2023), Embodied Spaces: The Body as Architecture, Strada Gallery, New York (2023), Les Enchantées, Frontview, Berlin (2023), The Garden, The Curators Room, Amsterdam (2023), Trangressive: Nonkonforme Zugänge zu Kunst and Stadt, Kühlhaus Berlin, Berlin (2022), Non Playable Character, The Fairest, 59th Venice Biennale, Venice (2022), Home Alone, ATM Gallery, New York (2020), Berlin – Lagos: Mobility and Heritage, Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2018). 

His work is held in public and private art collections worldwide, among them MACBA Barcelona and the National Museum of Contemporary Art – EMST of Athens.